From a very young age Sharon was known to be very creative and artistic. It had started when she was a young child and drew on her bedroom walls with crayons. When she was in high school, she was allowed to draw and paint a mural on two walls of a downstair room in the family’s basement. She had an art teacher who urged her to continue her studies in art. For graduation, her parents gave her a Minolta X370 camera. After graduation, she decided to listen to her art teacher and attended the only all woman’s art college, Moore College of Art and Design located in Philadelphia, PA.
When she took photography classes in art school, she fell in love with the 4 x 5 format camera. At this time, she was allowed to take her father’s Yashica Mat-124 Copal-SV 2 ¼ camera to school with her. Years later, she inherited the camera from him. She ended up majoring in textile design with a minor in photography. While studying in college she found a way to combine both mediums together through photographic silk-screening and cyano printing on fabric.
She spent the first 12 years of her working career in the textile field, working in wholesales and the textile mills in Rhode Island. Her career path changed after many of the textile mills in the area closed, moved south or overseas. She continued her love of textiles by doing commissioned quilts. She belongs to one of the area’s quilt guilds.
Her love for photography never waned over the years. She continues to take her photographs as a passion. In recent years she has resumed in combining her two loves, textiles and photography together. She combines them by printing her photographs on fabric and make them into photo art quilts as she describes them. And most recently, she is experimenting with cyano printing on fabric as well.
Sharon enjoys photographing just about anything and everything. She is fascinated by every day normal things that people just walk by or overlook. A pastor of hers had once described her work to be the unseen grey areas of life and did a sermon on it. For Sharon, it has never been about the equipment but in what she sees in front of her. She continues to explore and learn new ideas and techniques as she pushes her work to the next phase.
Contact Info: smthomasbibeaultdesigns@gmail.com
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All photographs are ©2024 SM Thomas Bibeault Designs. All rights reserved. No work may be used for any purpose without prior written permission. Please contact me for information.