Biography

Tina Maier is a self-taught textile artist who has sewn for most of her life while growing up in and around the Bay Area.  There has never been a time when she wasn’t manipulating fabric and textiles in some way.  She started learning the basics of sewing at age 8 with her oh-so-impatient mother and has seldom put down the needle and thread since.  She is a true hippie’s kid having grown up on a windmill-powered Buddhist commune in the Sonoma hills during the 60s & 70s where her best friends were goats and chickens. 

She has had two businesses, the first being a stuffed animal company she developed while in high school called “Decked Out Ducks” (maiden name Rudduck), and the second called “Glutton for Buttons” in the 90’s when she made contemporary jewelry out of buttons.  She has had many private clients over the years for her clothing designs, and has been represented by several small stores in San Francisco that have sold her wearable art and jewelry.

Tina Maier is a lover of repurposing and strives to use as many found and reusable materials in her work as she can. She is a longtime member of FabMo, an organization in Mountain View California that rescues interior decorator textiles from landfill, and uses these materials in all of her work.  Her studio takes up an entire floor of her home near the ocean.

Tina Maier is a Credentialed School Counselor (PPSC), Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (MFT), and High School teacher of Psychology, Sex Education, and Fabric Arts. She has three adult children, three granddaughters, and has been married to her husband over 31 years.