Cora Foley
Fabric Art
Primarily a self taught artist in a variety of media, with an intense desire for learning, Cora began to fulfill her lifelong desire to create art after retiring from the corporate world. Born with natural talent, she was drawing three dimensional horses on the chalkboard in kindergarten. In her high school art classes offered had four levels that had to be taken in sequence. So after easily completing a two day assignment in Art I for example, she would draw a portrait for extra credit. She earned all A’s in her Art classes, but was frequently unchallenged, anxious to progress to more advanced level classes.
In her senior year the art curriculum changed to a subject based offering, and she took classes in oil painting, pottery on a wheel, graphic arts, and so forth. Having most of the credits needed to graduate, she was able to spend 5 hours a day in the art room during her final semester. It was her happy place!
After learning computer programming in her mid twenties, she had an extensive career in information technology that involved a great deal of travel, and often working well past the traditional 9-5. She learned to do stained glass by taking an evening workshop while spending her days as a systems engineer. As her career progressed, so did her interest in learning different crafts. A half day workshop on learning to paint a loon decoy at a wildlife art exhibition in 1991 sparked an interest in carving lifelike wooden decoys, but her favorite part of the process was always painting the carved decoys.
She learned to sew and crochet from her mother at an early age. She learned to weave as an adult and at one point owned three floor looms, tried her hand at spinning yarn, and learned wet felting in a workshop at a fiber festival. She also learned how to dye wool using commercial and natural dyes. Her inspiration for learning about natural fibers and fiber arts came from moving to a farm in 2005 and investing in a small herd of alpacas. The farm was her private retreat from the stress and demands of frequent travel for work. She had become a senior level consultant, managing or advising on large scale system implementations. But the demanding work paid a competitive salary, and the herd of alpacas grew to over 60. Cora’s love of the alpacas drove her to learn all that she could about them and the fiber they produced. Her farm was known for high quality standards and excellent breeding stock, with many show champions.
It was in her studio at the farm that she developed her technique for creating very thin, lightweight, high fashion scarves using alpaca, fine wool, and silk, employing the ancient technique of wet felting. She introduced her colorful scarves at a spring fiber festival in Ann Arbor in 2017; they sold out the first day and she was taking orders for more.
Cora never stopped painting and drawing, but only since retiring and moving to Canadian Lakes near Big Rapids has she been able to really focus on creating art. In recent years she’s taken oil painting lessons, and creates stained glass or mosaic pieces when the mood strikes. She enjoys painting landscapes in oils, and has returned to creating art with pastel chalks, gouache, and watercolors.
She continues to enjoy the fiber arts, either crocheting, needle felting or designing new wet felted pieces. She stopped selling her creations at fiber festivals in 2020. Cora’s pieces are currently offered exclusively through Artworks. She occasionally accepts commissioned art requests.
