Dana Endsley

Dana, along with friend Anne Cowie, co-founded The Bookies while the two were operating Stillwater Studios, a working/teaching studio in McAdenville, North Carolina. Due to life circumstances and direction, Dana took a several year hiatus from the group and happily rejoined in 2023.

Dana finds  inspiration from the natural world, from her inner being and from everyday life. She tends to collect images internally that play out in her dreams and awakens with an inspiration to create.

Although Dana has worked in so many mediums, she returns to fiber again and again; paper, textiles, plant fibers. She most enjoys materials she can manipulate, build and construct.  

Her work is steeped in story and process. Dana tends to start with a story that she wants to tell or is asking to be told and then the process and materials that can do that show up.  Connection is a theme that runs through her creative work; supporting and exploring connection to others, to the natural world, to spirit, to self.

For the past several years Dana’s work has centered on large public projects that all had a social justice, community building theme and purpose. After the pandemic, she has found herself in a quieter, reflective, more contemplative place and has naturally circled back to exploring some of her earliest materials. She is currently working with fiber and studying the themes of “women’s work”, the traditional creating that has been done by women and the politics of that work.

Dana is inspired by: Frida Kahlo, Maya Linn, Judy Chicago, Meinrad Craighead, Andy Goldsworthy, Joni Mitchell.