Teresa Eaton I was born in San Francisco in 1954. I began hand weaving in 1978 and had a career selling my woven clothing designs of silk, wools, and mohair at shows, boutiques and galleries throughout the U.S. until 2002.   After a bout with a very aggressive form of breast cancer in 2000 and the subsequent difficult treatment for that disease, I sought new ways to more fully express myself as an artist and thus worked to pursue new mediums.   I am now a mixed media collage artist, working especially with paper I make by hand and paint with acrylics. I accent much of the now painted paper with metallic pastels I make with beeswax. I then assemble the paper on canvas, often embellishing the small pieces with stitching, copper foil, silk organza, found objects, found papers, bits of old metals and woods-whatever is at hand.   My work still strongly implies hand-weaving and now I think of it as both facsimile and metaphor. Paper, old fabrics and jewelry with their soft and worn patinas, rocks and stones, rust - all elements I incorporate into my work exploring the concepts of time passing and the inherent beauty in aging and decay. Of late, I’ve created boxes to meld into the work-boxes that seem old and familiar yet mysterious, perhaps containing secrets and messages from another time and place. I invite the viewer to lose oneself in this work and to create a world of their own imagining.