I have been working in Textiles since 1997 - from the time I finished a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Visual) and decided to make just one quilt.

My background - life before quilts - was in science. My contemporary work is usually based on science or women's issues. I am moving towards a melding of my fine art work and my textile work. I am interested in the way pattern comes into many parts of our lives. I often include some geometrical piecing in my work as I think it keeps me technically on my toes and provides a key for traditional quilters to link to my work.

I have four children and a very supportive husband who works as a diplomat for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. While following him I have lived a total of eleven years in Arab and Islamic countries. This might seem irrelevant to quilting, but has influenced my subject matter and much of my work reflects my love of the Middle East. I have lived in Syria, Western Samoa, Malaysia, Jordan and in Jerusalem.

I teach and really enjoy it. There is no greater delight than to offer tools to a quilter who wants to make original work but doesn't know how to access her own ideas.

I am available for commission work but like to be given an idea of subject and colours and then left with some freedom to play.

www.jennybowker.com

Ittayer and the Friday Market in the City of the Dead Ittayer has a junk stall in the City of the Dead. It is not tidy - it is grotty and cluttered and he occasionally has things I actually wanted to buy. He has a wonderful welcoming smile. I have a collection of old keys, and a few locks, and hamzas - the hand-shaped protection against the Jealous Eye.

Secret Womens' Business - 2000 (166 x 127) My daughter brought an encyclopaedia of contraception home for a school project. I was fascinated by the range of shapes and played with them - using fleshy colours for backgrounds, and colours which do not belong I the body in the IUD's. My son commented that they looked like an explosion in the Barbie aisle. I worry that Barbie is teaching our children the wrong values - a need for a long thin body with big breasts, a wardrobe full of satin gowns, a palomino horse, a caravan, and Ken, forever sealed into his jocks. In looking for a different symbol of fertility I used images of old symbols - the Venus of Willendorf and others like her. To further emphasise the fertility theme you will find the phases of the moon, quilting to suggest the tree of life in some places and a uterus and ovaries in others, and cowries - symbolising woman in the South Pacific where I grew up.