Creating a Fun, Fabulous Career in the Arts

An Interview with Rug Hooking Artist Deanne Fitzpatrick

By Molly Anderson-Childers

This month, I am interviewing Deanne Fitzpatrick. An accomplished artist, she has created lovely hooked rugs that hang in the Permanent Collections of The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, The Canadian Museum of Civilization, The Nova Scotia Art Bank, and The Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Rug Hooking Magazine, and is part of the Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and the Nova Scotia Folk Art Society. Fitzpatrick is also the author of "Hook Me a Story, a History and Method of Rug Hooking in Atlantic Canada", published in 1999, and now in its fourth printing.

But that doesn’t give you a very clear picture of this mysterious artist…so…Here is an excerpt from her “About the Artist” page on her website, www.hookingrugs.com:

"I am a woman who lives on seven acres in an old farm house with wooden clapboard that is lifting in the wind. I walk five miles a day, most days, because it clears my head, and stretches out stiff limbs that have hunched over a rug frame. I am a lot of things in no particular order, a mother, sister, wife, artist, writer, teacher, reader, thinker, talker, friend, fool, dreamer, buddy… In my work, the thing that matters most is making great rugs. I hook nearly every day. I cannot stop myself. I like the feel of wool slipping through my fingers. I love working alone, though I had no idea that I would. It is a found pleasure, being alone, and it is one of my most favorite pleasures, being alone in the studio.

"I want to write more books. I want them to be both worthwhile and beautiful because writing is another thing I found that I liked to do. I dream that a small stack of books that I wrote myself will lay on my office shelf.

"I want to hang onto as simple a life as I possibly can. I do not find that easy because there are so many charms, that are like a ruby to a crow, but it is my goal to live simply, and make hooked rugs that are unmistakably art.

"I grew up in Freshwater, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, the youngest of seven children. My mother and both of my grandmothers hooked rugs as a past time, and as a chore of necessity. I can still see a Rita Murphy, my friends mother, sitting in her back room, hooking away on her mats. Her floors were a carpet of many multicoloured hooked rugs. At the time to me it seemed an old fashioned thing. Little did I know that I would spend years doing exactly the same thing…"

Q: Can you tell us about your early career? Did you always have an interest in working with hooked rugs, or did you begin your professional life in a totally different field and come to this work later in life? Where did you start, and how did you end up here?

A: I began as a therapist, learned to hook rugs on a weekend away and never looked back. I wanted rugs for an old farmhouse where I had settled. Though I did not know how to hook, it was something I had always been familiar with. As a teenager, I began seeing rugs for what they were. I marveled that a woman’s hand had pulled up every loop in a rug that lay on the floor of my sisters' farmhouse. In my mid-twenties, I went to an annual meeting of The Rug Hooking Guild of Nova Scotia, and Marion Kennedy taught me the basics. How to cut your wool, and how to pull up a loop, then she told me to get to it. As soon as I started hooking rugs I knew it was for me. It was a simple technique, and I could see my progress. I finished my first little stamped pattern with in a week and so it began.

Q: What is your creative process with a new piece? Do you make a sketch, design, or pattern to work from before beginning? Can you describe the process from start to finish — the seminal idea to the end result?

A: I sketch all the time. I keep my sketch books and pore through them for ideas. Sometimes a design emerges out of nowhere. I walk five miles a day, and sometimes inspiration emerges on the walk. I then sketch the design on burlap or linen and hook it. I learned that I could tell stories, and express myself through rug hooking. This is what really got me involved with it. Each time I make a rug I create a new design. In many of my pieces I tell stories or express ideas about the world. I work full time as a rug hooking artist. Each piece I create is different from the last. I use recycled cloth, and gather old wool clothing from real people in real communities. The clothes are washed, dried and torn apart. It is then hooked, loop by loop, on a backing of burlap or linen.

Q: Can you describe a simple project readers can do at home to get a taste of what you do all day?

A: Most people start with a little kit from my website but you could just get a piece of burlap, put it in a hoop, cut up a few t-shirts for “yarn” and try hooking it with a rug hook.

Q: Do you ever work with other media, such as watercolor or sculpture? You seem to have a painter’s eye for color and tone.

A: Not much. Wool is my medium.

Q: Have you received any formal training in this field, or are you a self-taught artist?

A: No, I’m completely self taught.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about what the future holds for you? Any exciting upcoming events, workshops or shows you’d like to discuss?

A: I hope to write another book. Every year we have a symposium, you can read about next year’s symposium on the website. I really look forward to that! I also have a show coming up called “The Art of Visiting,” at the Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador that I am working on.

Q: How did you become interested in this art form? Is it something passed down through your family, or did you discover it on your own after you grew up?

A:I discovered it after I grew up. Both my mother and grandmothers did it but they did not teach me.

Continue to Deanne Fitzpatrick interview page 2 »