Michele came to art through an unusual path – she holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue, and worked for 10 years as a research scientist.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in Minnesota in 2006.  She writes poetry and remains interested in scientific ideas, drawing upon both in her visual artwork.  She studied hand bookbinding and letterpress printing at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and has studied with various surface design and book artists, including Barbara Lee Smith and Ed Hutchins.  

As a child Michele spent a lot of time with either needle and thread or scissors and paper.  For many years she abandoned stitching and embroidery work to focus on paper-based art, but recently she has reconciled the two art forms, combining paper collage with machine stitching and hand embroidery to create novel “paper quilts.”  This work blurs the lines between textile and paper art, and often, when original poetry is included in the work, blurs the line between literature and visual art. 

Michele finds inspiration in the patterns and colors in nature, as well as in her original poetry and the concepts and language of science.  She has developed three-dimensional book structures and worked with moveable parts and pop-ups in books, and has combined original digital photos with poetry in her artwork.