Fabric always attracted Benita Cullinan. The textures, the colors, the patterns and the possibilities. No piece was too small, too weird or unusable. It needed to be rescued, saved, given another purpose. Benita’s education started at the kitchen table watching her mother doing alterations on women’s clothing. She received a Masters in Textile Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Humor has also been an important part of her pieces. Things needed to be fun, light hearted, have a human characteristic or an ironic twist on an idea. Her work demands time to produce, most often in the solitude of her studio. She remarks, “This is wehere my animals find me. They come because my work table is a lovely flat branch, the fabric soft to dig their claws in and they can destroy so much in so little time. I use them for subjects in my work as so many people respond favorably to them.”