Meet the Jurors

Betty Busby

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design with a ceramics major, Betty Busby founded a custom ceramic tile manufacturing firm in Los Angeles. After nearly 20 years of running the firm, she sold the business in 1994 (it is still in operation to this day). Upon relocating to New Mexico, she changed the focus of her artwork to fiber, taking it full time in 2004.

Her manufacturing background has led to constant experimentation with new materials and techniques that fuel her work. Originally inspired by Amish quilts at the Kutztown County Fair near her childhood home in Pennsylvania, her work has made the journey from bed quilts to mixed media sculpture and is constantly evolving and heading in new directions.

The classic fractal structures of the sub-microscopic world are a persistent model, as are natural processes, such as oxidation, replication and growth.

Valerie S. Goodwin

Valerie S. Goodwin is a mixed media fiber artist and architect whose works of fine art are included in museum and private collections. Most of her work is inspired by a love of aerial views of landscapes and cities. Many of her quilts are based on maps.

Goodwin’s art has moved through various stages from traditional quilting to an interest in abstract expressionism and currently is inspired by real and imaginary landscapes and cities. In some cases, her work shows an architectural sense of space with an archaeological perspective. In others, the network of the city and its built form are more prominent. These compositions work on several levels, from close-up and far away as if one was looking at it from above.

She received degrees in architecture from Washington University and Yale University. Her award-winning work has been widely published and exhibited. She also lectures and gives workshops nationally and internationally. For over 26 years, she taught architectural design at Florida A&M University.

Mi-Kyoung Lee

Mi-Kyoung Lee is Director of the Craft & Material Studies Program and Head of Fibers/Textile at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Lee has had eighteen solo exhibitions and a number of national and international lectures, curatorial and collaborative projects, and exhibitions, including the Arizona Art Museum, Cranbrook Museum of Art, Reading Public Museum, Painted Bride Art Center, New York and Chicago SOFA, Busan Metropolitan Museum in Korea, Espace de Tisserands, France, International Fiber Art Fair in Seoul, Korea, 10th International Beijing Fiber Biennale, and 8th Beijing International Visual Art Bienniale in 2019. Lee received a fellowship from the Center for Emerging Artist in Philadelphia. Lee is a recipient of the Junior Minority Faculty Grant Awards from the Lindback Foundation as well as a number of faculty development grants from The University of the Arts and Korea Foundation for her research and curatorial projects. Lee was an editor for Art Textile of the World: Korea, Volume I, which was published by the Telos Art Publishing company. Since 2005, Lee has collaborated with International Opera Theater as a costume and set designer.