Denise started art quilting in the early 1990’s. She is now an internationally recognized and acclaimed exhibitor, lecturer, and teacher.
Denise's art quilts feature either Celtic megalithic stones and monoliths – think Stonehenge – or more recent monastic ruins and passageways. They are known for their moodiness and emotion-inducing realism – surprisingly true-to-life stones, yet abstract landscapes and skies – and, technically, for the use of her hand-painted fabrics; assertive textures, "light management", shadowing, and the use of perspective; color subtlety and gradation; and her overall emphasis on craftsmanship and technique precision.
Her goal is to create art that moves the viewer, evokes emotion, seems alive, makes you feel or remember something important, makes you want to go there, makes you want to be there now, in the moment. Art quilting is a perfect medium for achieving these ends. Viewers often feel that Denise's quilts actually “pull them in”, that they want to go into and through them, to be part of the story, to see where they're seemingly being led. Her "stones" portfolio now exceeds 60 quilts.
She has been a featured artist with major invitational solo exhibitions both within the US, including a recent (2021) summer-long solo gallery and exhibition at the US National Quilt Museum (Paducah, KY), and internationally, with similar solo exhibitions at the UK Festival of Quilts (Birmingham, England), Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (Alsace, France), the China International Patchwork Invitational Arts Show (Beijing, China), and other similar national gatherings in Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, South Korea, The Netherlands, and Spain.
In the US, in addition to her exhibition at the US National Quilt Museum, Denise has had major (three-month) solo regional exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles (San Jose, California, USA), the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum (La Conner, Washington, USA), and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum (Golden, Colorado, USA). She has similarly had multiple individual works juried into most every major US art quilt exhibition, including: Quilt National, AQS, Visions, Sacred Threads, Art Quilts at the Whistler, Artist as Quiltmaker, Quilts=Art=Quilts, etc., and is a multiple Quilt National (USA) award winner – both People's Choice and the McCarthy Memorial Award for Craftsmanship.
She and her work have also been featured worldwide in major in-depth magazine articles and artist profiles, including Art Quilt Quarterly (USA), Art Quilt Collector (USA), Quilting Arts Magazine (USA), Embroidery Magazine (UK), Patchwork Professional (Germany), Les Nouvelles – Patchwork et Creation Textile (France), Artemorbida Textile Art Magazine (Italy), Fiber Art Now (USA), Fiber Arts Magazine (USA), Art Quilting Studio Magazine (USA), Machine Quilting Unlimited (USA), Magic Patch Magazine (France), Burda Patchwork and Quilting Magazine (France and Germany), Quilt Italia National Quilt Guild Magazine (Italy), and the Corea Quilt Associates National Newsletter (South Korea).
Recent media coverage includes multiple videos recently recorded for the Public Broadcasting System (USA) and Quilting Arts TV (USA). She was similarly one of the first artists featured with a dedicated The Quilt Show.com video episode (#106).
Teaching, lecturing, and workshop highlights include teaching a week-long landscape design and contemporary art quilting workshop and retreat at Georgia O'Keefe's (America's foremost landscape artist) Ghost Ranch (USA); multiple every-other-year week-long workshops at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops (USA); and teaching the Séminar Post Carrefour (France), a week-long masterclass – only one workshop, and workshop instructor, is selected each year – celebrating a special end to each year's annual Le Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (the EU's largest annual quilting festival). She also typically teaches her five-day (or sometimes shorter) workshops at each major visited national exhibition venue (described above), plus annual workshops both near her home in Colorado and throughout the USA.