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"My formal arts education was in music and dance," Linda Garriott recalls.  "I had no formal training as a visual artist."   As a girl growing up in Montreal, she attended many concerts featuring a rich, eclectic mix of musicians.  Flamenco guitarist, Manitas De Plato, and South African singer, Miriam Makebo, were particular favorites.  It is these performers, and the many others who swirled through Garriott's childhood, that served as her earliest artistic influences.  "I was," she smiles, "mostly drawn to rhythm."

Afer earning a B.A. in Political Science from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Garriott moved to the United States to pursue her career as a marketing and public relations professional.  She settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she soon established herself as a talented consultant with clients representing a range of fields from green construction to higher education.  Additionally, the busy young professional and inveterate music aficionado hosted and produced concert events, including a summer outdoor blues series, in her adopted hometown.

Yet, as satisfying as she found her career, Garriott craved an artistic outlet.  "I wanted to find a hobby," she says.  "I started off with paint and, after several attempts at realism, I found my niche in abstract designs.  I didn't start to uncover my artistic self until I was approaching my mid twenties."

Two significant events occurred around this time to set Garriott on her creative course.  "My first awakening happened while walking past a framing shop near a metro station in Montreal," she explains.  "I caught a glimpse of a Paul Klee poster."  In that random but pivotal moment, she fell in love with abstract expressionism. Eventually, this discovery would lead her to the works of Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miro, and later, Henri Matisse and Georgia O'Keeffe.

In 1986, at the urging of a friend who thought Garriott's abstract drawings were well suited to the rug making medium, Garriott met with Hallie Hall.  Hall, an icon of traditional rug hooking, presented Garriott with a Navajo-inspired pattern rendered on burlap canvas.  "She didn't think I gave out the strawberry, puppy dog, cow-over-the-moon vibe," chuckles Garriott.  As she worked on this initial project, Garriott found herself thinking of original rug designs of her own.  "My next rug project was my first original design, and I also experimented with custom dyeing techniques," she notes.  "In this work and the others that followed, I explored symmetry and straight lines, and I enjoyed playing with color."  Garriott completed her first original design in 1990.  When she took it to her mentor for an insurance appraisal, she was taken aback by Hall's response.  "She complimented me on the sophistication of the design and encouraged me to continue making rugs and to consider pursuing this art form very seriously."

During the next decade and a half, as Garriott's professional life expanded to include public radio and television development and production, she continued to pursue her art as a hobby.  Galleries and juried shows across New England showcased Garriott's work, and guests to her home, unaware that she had made them, routinely asked Garriott where they could buy rugs just like hers.  Yet, despite such flattering approbation, Garriott viewed making a living with her art as problematic.   Highly labor-intensive, some of her pieces took over 500 hours to complete.

Marriage to Bob Feigin, a resident of Somerville, and the purchase of a home in Medford, led Garriott to move to the Boston area in 2000. Several years later, now a successful, self-employed consultant, Garriott found herself at a crossroads.   "It was time to think of the next step," she remembers.  "Do I grow the business?  Do I try something else?  Ultimately, I was tempted by what I had placed in my back pocket - the rugs."  A chance meeting with an interior designer gave Garriott her answer.  "She offered me a piece of practical advice - you create the designs and let others produce the rugs," Garriott relates.  "That was the pearl I needed."

Garriott tapered back her consulting work as she devoted herself full time to her new venture.  She created the designs for her signature collection, secured a manufacturer in India, and contracted with Rugmark, an international foundation working with partners in India, Nepal, and Pakistan, to ensure no illegal child labor would be used in the production of her rugs.  In April, 2005, Linda Garriott Designs, LLC, officially opened for business.

"My philosophy is to create beautiful and functional art for the floor using high quality wool while being socially and economically responsible in my business practices," states Garriott.  "When I first started designing, balance was achieved by symmetry.  As I've grown as a designer, I've become more comfortable with risk.  So now I design curvilinear lines that are asymmetrical.  My challenge is to create harmony with curve and asymmetry.   I just love the play of that."

Garriott begins with a curving line which evolves as she goes along so that each of the seven designs in her signature line is unique.  Before sending these concepts to India for production, however, Garriott "plays with color."   "Color has the ability to affect our moods," Garriott says.  "Although, ultimately, customers choose their color combination [from a palette of fifty colors], I want to show what some of the possibilities are."   Towards this end, each design is available in two separate stock color combinations.

In Passion Dance from Garriott's current collection, an abstracted chili-pepper red figure dominates the field.   Outlined in shimmering magenta, it is caught in mid-leap, its arms raised rapturously in a gesture of ecstasy.   Wide, sinuous strips of silver and citrine alternate with the brilliant red.  Serene Dance, another work from the same line, features the same stylized, curvilinear figure in subdued olive green limned with mauve.  Within its peaceful palette, the form floats weightlessly amidst meandering currents of soft grey and cheerful, tranquil tangerine.

"I love harmony, color, simplicity, and flair," declares Garriott.  "This is what I bring to my work."   Today she is bringing those qualities to a brand new signature collection which will feature among its motifs the abstract representation of a bird.  "I want my work to feel like a breath of fresh air," she asserts, and indeed, with their winning combination of lyrical design and quality craftsmanship, Linda Garriott's rugs embody a timeless functional beauty, invigorating every surface they grace.

To request the Linda Garriott Design catalog or to view examples of the Signature Collection, visit www.lindagarriottdesign.com or call 781.391.7649.