Imaging My Inner Fire: Finding My Path Through Creating Art. This item is unavailable.Imaging My Inner Fire: Finding My Path Through Creating Art

3rd place award, memoir category, Independent Publisher Book Awards, 2014,Imaging My Inner Fire is the story of one person discovering what to do with the rest of her life at age 60! Envisioning herself as a writer for several decades Martha Jane Petersen was captured by visual art in the early 1990's. She wondered what to do with this intrusion, whether to follow it or ignore it. Her book tells of her questions, ponderings and struggles to finally claim her path as a creator of innovative art quilts. A colored plate of a quilt and its creative process is detailed in each chapter. Some of the book's themes include voice, creativity, direction, resistance and courage as the reader follows her convoluted path into art making - themes others also encounter in various creative endeavors. "My memoir is not about quilt making as such, although aspects of that are described. Rather, it reveals how, in finding my passion - what I call my Inner Fire - I discovered a direction to follow. My hope is that readers will recognize their own Inner Fire to guide their path in life."

A native of South Carolina, Martha Jane Petersen became a self-taught fabric artist making improvisational art quilts. She has exhibited her work primarily in eastern United States. She and her husband lived for sixteen years overseas, in Taiwan, Ghana and Nigeria as mission co-workers with the Presbyterian Church, USA. In mid-life, she entered seminary and became an ordained Presbyterian minister. Along the way she dabbled in visual art which came to flower in retirement in North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Pete. They have three adult children and five grandchildren.