Hello out there. My name is Andrea Dupree, I’m an interdisciplinary fiber artist & educator based in Northern New Mexico. I create felt sculptures, wearables & video, and facilitate classes & workshops in art & Yoga for all ages through Curious Bluebird, LLC.
Andrea Dupree | Interdisciplinary Fiber Artist & Educator
My name is Andrea Dupree, an identifier given to me by my parents in 1982 that’s sometimes misspelled as Andrea Dupre. I’m an interdisciplinary fiber artist and educator born in South Louisiana and now based in New Mexico’s Pojoaque Valley, creating tactile work rooted in transformation, material curiosity, and relationships with self and the more-than-human world.
Felted Sculpture & Material Transformation
My studio practice centers on felted sculpture, installation and assemblage, alongside video and land-based practices. Wool and plant fibers are at the center of my work because they embody transformation. Through the slow processes of wet and needle felting, loose fibers become sculptural forms that are at once soft and durable. I work with wool, including Merino, Corriedale, and Navajo-Churro, alongside flax, ramie, silk, bamboo, found objects, and reclaimed and gathered materials.
Water is an essential collaborator in this process. I harvest rainwater for wet felting and return it to my garden afterward, creating a small cycle between landscape, studio, and garden. These material relationships are part of what keeps pulling me back to fiber: making becomes a way of paying attention to transformation, place, and the materials themselves.
South Louisiana, Mardi Gras & a Maker Childhood
I grew up in South Louisiana in a DIY/ maker household, shaped by my parents’ backgrounds in science and mathematics. Our home-made home was constantly filled with tools, materials, experiments, and elaborate creative and technical projects. Growing up I was exposed to everything from construction (my dad and maternal grandfather built both of my childhood homes), woodworking, electronics, and welding to my mom’s intricate sewing and sophisticated computer programming (My mom was mostly working from home doing these projects in the 1980’s, and later went on to develop the first distance learning program for the math department at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux LA). I never became particularly proficient in most of them, but the craftsmanship, problem-solving, and spirit of scientific inquiry stuck.
As a child I spent hours exploring the swamps and sugar cane fields surrounding our home, inventing stories and imaginary worlds within the landscape. At the same time, I was surrounded by the visual language of Catholicism and Mardi Gras, where handmade adornments, statues, altars, costumes, and ritual transformed ordinary materials into meaningful objects and experiences. Together, these experiences taught me to see making as a way of investigating the world and transforming what is already around us. They continue to shape both how I work and what I create.
My formal study of fine art gave me a framework for bringing personal experience, material experimentation, and conceptual inquiry together. Since earning my BFA in Studio Art in 2004, my practice has moved across fiber, sculpture, installation, video, ceramics, movement, and socially engaged projects. Becoming a mother in 2010 and deepening my practice of Yoga brought another shift: an increasing attention to presence, embodiment, interconnectedness, and how the process of making can matter as much as the object that results.
Ecology, Art & the More-than-Human World
Much of my work moves between the material and metaphysical. Influenced by animism and ecofeminism as well as ritual and the exuberant visual traditions of my upbringing, I create forms that exist somewhere between sculpture, artifact, altar, and curious object. Rather than assigning fixed meanings, I’m interested in making space for contemplation and interpretation.
Felting Workshops, Creative Education & Exhibitions
My teaching practice grows from this same curiosity. For more than 20 years, I’ve worked as an artist and educator with children and adults. Drawing from Reggio-inspired education, Yoga, mindfulness, and arts-based learning, I create workshops and classes centered on experimentation, sensory experience, and meaningful encounters with materials.
My work has been presented through exhibitions, installations, and programs throughout New Mexico, including the New Mexico Museum of Art’s Vladem Contemporary, Historic Santa Fe Foundation, Little Bites Gallery, Meow Wolf Santa Fe and Española Valley Fiber Arts Center. My digital and visual art projects have received grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Louisiana Division of the Arts, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and Houma Convention & Visitors Bureau. My current studio practice is supported in part by a New Mexico Creative Industries Business Development & Expansion Grant.
Through Curious Bluebird, I bring these strands together: an evolving studio practice, contemporary fiber art, and creative experiences that invite people to make, notice, experiment, and reconnect with their own curiosity.