Barbara...I am a lifelong student of design and style, whether in lifestyle, fashion, or gardening with a parallel life of forty-two years in healthcare. Inspired to pursue my own artistic/creative side for most of my professional life, I have done so to a great extent; this while raising three children. A juggler of sorts. Once retired, with children grown and happily nurturing grandchildren, with devoted husband John at my side, I began the humbling pursuit of small business management & art licensing, carving out the fundamentals to support the success of WinterPrint.
Aileen...My whole life has been about making things. From the early work habits, cloth, sewing and calligraphy, a foundation was set up to follow other avenues as they arrived. After moving to New York, meeting Tobias Mostel, my husband and best friend, my work in design and calligraphy continued. Years were also spent in book design, set design, mural painting and ceramics. Working for many years on an eleven-volume anthropology book for Dr. Edmund Carpenter at the Rock Foundation was a nodal change in life. Seeing the meanings and reasons of primitive designs, the patterns of remembering ancestry, the myths of ancient people became a constant daily research. It all became woven together in trees, animals, needles, smoke and threads and is the daily totem. These lessons served my eye in the pattern making. Breast cancer moved in around 2001 and has remained. Each day, one at a time, has been a balance of remembering and doing.
We were raised in a family that nurtured our creative spirits, gave us a sense of curiosity, design, craft and concentration; like our Mama, Frances Winter, who gave us nearly free rein to explore and build, our Maternal Grandmama, Frances Beggs, who taught us to use our hands and our Uncle Carter Winter and his wife Charlotte, who both inspired awareness of the world of design, and the world in general. These people were profound early influences in our lives. They taught us not only to use our hands, but also to expand our minds and worlds beyond the sleepy southern culture where we were raised. With that background, the project of pattern making, craftsmanship and design became part of our nature.
These values we are handing off to the friends, children and grandchildren in our lives, passing on the legacy of our ancestors.
