Meet the Artist:

I am a 59 year old wife, mother of two grown sons and grandmother of one positively scrumptious grandson.  I am happily living with my darling husband, two dogs and one cat in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.

I have moved a lot in my life living nearly half of it outside of the United States in Europe and the Middle East.   In the process, I have had more than a few professional incarnations.  I have been a midwife with a home-birth practice, classroom teacher, computer programmer, secretary, bookkeeper, waitress and even a car sales person.  I have always loved sewing and managed to use my skills in that area to put a little money in my pocket since I was seven and started making doll clothes for friends in the neighborhood.

A little over eleven years ago, a friend drug me to my first bear show to get my mind off a health crisis in the life of my younger son, Seth.  I designed my first bear, Mickey with his lady bug, took him to a show and the rest, as they say, is history.  Now I am hooked on bears and happily designing and making the furry critters as fast as my little fingers can stitch them up.

In the last eleven summers, my bears have appeared on the Rosie O'Donnell Show and found display space in five different retail stores in North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia as well as from my web site and at  shows from Smithtown, New York to Austin, Texas.  A grown woman shouldn't be allowed to have such a good time in public but I did and I do!

Please watch my show and signing page for details of my schedule for the up coming season so that I have the opportunity to meet you in person.

To e-mail me for information on availability of bears, (*click here and a blank message form will pop up.)  Please be sure to include your snail mail address in your message if you want to be on my mailing list for upcoming events.

I would like very much to hear your comments.  If you visit this site and like what you see, please let me know.  If you don't like what you see, please tell me that too and explain why.  Maybe I can fix it.   I can promise that I will at least try.

Back Home Again in My Beautiful Mountains

Home in North Carolina, spring is here and winter is over.  2004's hurricanes were nothing to the damage wrought by Katrina, Rita and Wilma.  The devastation to property and people's lives is almost incomprehensible.  In the aftermath of devastating storms, years of worsening economic woes, increasing unemployment and all the terror of September 11th and the recent war, I have often wondered if anything will ever be right again.  I had family and friends in New York City and my son and daughter-in-law in the army who were in D.C., at the time of the bombings.

Like many of you, I watched the morning news on the 11th holding my breath, hoping and praying that no one I loved would be lost in the rubble of either New York or our nation’s capitol.  When I finally got word that all my friends and family were among the survivors, I breathed a sigh of relief and then almost immediately felt terrible guilt.

How could I feel relief when so many others mourned such terrible loss? It is the same feeling now.  My house is in one piece.  My family is safe.  We lost our road and were without power for a time but that is nothing in comparison to the loss for others.  Why them and not me?   I didn’t have answers when the towers came down and I don’t have them now.  I only have fear for the safety of my son now serving his country overseas, and for my grandson. The world is a frightening place but my faith teaches me that, “we live in two worlds; the one that is and the one that might be.  Nothing is ordained for us; neither delight nor defeat, neither peace nor war.  Life flows and we must choose.  We can, if we will, change the world that is, into the world that may yet come to be”.

For my part, I choose to keep living in these majestic mountains, making endearing teddy bears that, hopefully, bring comfort and smiles where so many tears have fallen, and to keep believing in the hope of a future that can be made safe from the insanity of September 11th, war in the Middle East, hard economic times and raging storms. 

North Carolina has been hard hit both by mother nature and a struggling economy.  Four years ago we had storm damage everywhere and record high unemployment, but we are a tenacious and hard working group.  I believe that we can and will join hands to support one another as we ride out the current storms of fortune, and nature, and wait anxiously for the safe return of our sons and daughters serving in harm's way in far away places.

In the mean time, I count my blessings, hold tight to my faith, hug my loved ones often, reminding them how precious they are to me and work as hard as I know how to make things around me a little bit better.  I wish the same for each of you.

By popular demand, I have added thread bear and bead knitted pouch kits and patterns to my this web site so if you have a hankering to make your own bear, please be sure to check them out.  Now all I have to do is sew like a crazy woman to have enough stock for the rest of the show season. 

I hope to see some of you along the way so please check my Show Schedule page for details of my planned travels. One of the things I like best about being a teddy bear artist is meeting all you collectors so please, if you can, come to one of my shows and drop by my booth to say hi, but don't mention my grandson unless you are prepared to admire the huge stack of pictures of him and his parents that I carry with me everywhere.

Shelley