Artist Gallery

Cynthia Dickinson

Cynthia Dickinson was born in El Paso, Tx. in 1954 and has subsequently lived in Austin, Houston, Denton, Dallas, and, for two months in 1976, Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

She enjoyed a variety of craft and building activities at home, elementary school, and camp. In junior high and again in high school she took a year more of art than was absolutely required -- the former taught by the effervescent Miss Meracle, and the latter by Mrs. Taylor who, while also attentive and kind, insisted on a regard for detail which she appreciates more now than she sometimes did then.

At the University of Houston and later at North Texas State University, while obtaining degrees having little to do with art, she was lucky enough to find the student center craft studios available to students not enrolled in art courses. In Houston, besides continuing to work with clay, she took advantage of their lost wax casting equipment to begin working with silver. In Denton, in addition to still more clay and building a spice rack, she was persuaded to join a leisure class on caning and rushwork.

While visiting her Mother in 1988, the two of them attended a crystal workshop where she first encountered wire wrapping, a skill which, unlike the casting, does not require specialized equipment and which in time she extended to fossils, arrowhead reproductions and small stone cats. While lacking feeling for the subtler energies of the stones, their myriad shapes and groupings continue to be a source of unending delight and inspiration.

She lives in Dallas, Tx. in a house slightly older than she is with her husband Clifford Barnes, his library, too much bric-a-brac, and as many cats as she can persuade him to enjoy. She has exhibited her work in the US, Canada and Australia.