Marilyn Leahy

Marilyn Leahy was born in 1954, to a family of accomplished needlewomen. Embroidery became an obsession throughout college and after graduation. Although she put her artwork on hold when she married, moved to Valdez, Alaska and started a family, her interest in embroidery was never completely abandoned. Leahy continued to read and study through correspondence, taking online classes from Helen Stevens, a silk embroiderer trained at the Royal College of Embroidery. “I would like to see embroidery break out of its sterile swamp of cross stitch and ‘fiber art.’ I would like to see it regain the high artistic status it held throughout world history. Hand embroidery is an intimate, personal art . . . Sometimes, silk hand embroidery is a better way of capturing the shimmering, glowing nuances of the natural world.”