Kestrel Michaud
Fiber Art
Contact
Biography
My name is Kestrel Michaud and I am a classically-trained artist with a passion for illustrating in fabric. My mom had crayons in my hands before I could even walk, so I’ve been doing artwork for almost my entire life. I started working with fabric in 2004. I was so enamored by this new medium that I'd religiously wake up at 4am and spend two hours working on my art before catching the bus to school. After my homework was done at night, I'd go right back to working on my pictures.
By the time I started college in 2006, I had developed my own unique style and technique, and I had completed almost 30 unique fabric pictures. I actually tried to get away from fabric in college because I wanted to learn how to paint and use other media. But, once my professors saw my fabric portfolio on my website, they wouldn't let me work in anything else. They recognized my skill and the unique nature of fabric as a medium. In 2010, I graduated with honors from Ringling College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and an extensive understanding of how to create captivating works of art out of fabric.
Each of my pictures contains hundreds of individual pieces of fabric, some even smaller than the tip of a fingernail. I cut and assemble them like a mosaic. They’re fused in place with a heat-sensitive fabric glue. I have always framed and hung my pictures like traditional fine art, but I've recently begun exploring stitching and art quilting. Since I've been creating fabric pictures for well over a decade, I've been collecting fabrics for that long, too.
