Peggy has always loved using her hands to create, and has a very early memory of learning to thread a needle.  She made tiny doll clothing, shoes, and accessories (and some of her own clothes) at a young age.  She was also fascinated with animals.  Horseless, she made do with models and created miniature bridles, saddles, and harnesses for them (and for the family dog) from her mother’s leather gloves.  As a pre-teen, she fashioned wire sculptures of animals and sold them at the local artist’s cooperative.  Her skill at and enjoyment of doing precise, meticulous work and her love of animals led to a career as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine with special interest in surgery.  While in school and in practice, Peggy was an active folk dancer, and constructed costumes to wear in performance. To make them, she learned how to weave using a loom found at a yard sale, and unexpectedly found herself immersed in the next endeavor—fiber art.

For over twenty years, Peggy has been utilizing fiber art techniques such as weaving, spinning, dyeing, fusing, and sewing as well as beading to create unique pieces of wearable art.  She constructed a series of award-winning garments resembling marine organisms that are identifiable to species.  To get the effects she wanted, she developed techniques for repurposing unusual and unexpected materials.  She incorporated stainless steel fiber used in aerospace applications into some projects, and fused finely shredded Mylar to make “paper” for other creations.  Perpetually looking for new materials and sources for inspiration, she recently encountered recycled rubber in the form of bicycle inner tubes, and a new realm of possibilities emerged.

Peggy began making jewelry from bike tubes for her own enjoyment and as gifts for her friends.  To create these entirely original works, she developed techniques for cutting and manipulating the rubber.  She utilized diverse sizes, curvatures, and thicknesses of the tubes for various effects, and introduced beads and other components.  She would construct multiple samples, experimenting until the desired design revealed itself.  She wore the jewelry daily; comments were frequent and effusive.  Both individual pieces and dramatic assemblies of multiple pieces were noticed and she received invitations to exhibit her work in museum shops, galleries, fashion shows, art walks, and other venues.