Yolanda Fundora's Gallery

Though textile design is one of the 2 main occupation of my present life, I have worked in many areas of the commercial design world and continue to enjoy a very active illustration and fine art career. Below are a few samples of some of my favorite designs or illustrations from all the visual worlds I inhabit.

This is a detail from my very first textile line I ever designed way back in the gouache and brush days of textile design. It is a large scale stripe and the line is called Night Blooms. Since these are my very first textile children, I'm very fond of them. If you want to see some other past textile designs that I really like click here.
X24 & Z26 from A Garden Alphabetized ( for your viewing pleasure) series Click on images to see the series.

I am currently collaborating with Marta McDowell, author and well-known botanical writer on a book based on the Garden Alphabetized series of prints. She is a delightful writer. Her book on Emily Dickinson's Gardens kept me reassuring company this spring as I worried my way through my first seed growing experiments. Marta is a teacher of landscape history at the New York Botanical Garden and Drew University in Madison, N.J. Marta has written for Woman’s Day, Gardening and Outdoor Living, Hortus, New Jersey Monthly and The New York Times. Click here to read a sample of Marta's text for the Garden Alphabetized book. Click here to read more about her Emily Dickinson book.

I was invited this year take part in the Blank Canvas Benefit: For Art's Sake. This is an exhibition and auction to benefit the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. All participants are given 12" x 12" blank canvases and must create a piece in whatever way or medium they desire. Of course, I've been breathing, eating, sleeping and dreaming quilts for the past few years so it is no wonder that when asked to create a piece for an art exhibit it acquires very quilt-like attributes even though I don't sew. I took one of my images from the Visual Thinking Series, an homage to quilt artists, called When Cropdusters Dream. I redesigned it so I had quilt blocks that could print on inkjet fabric. This way the image could be sewn back together to make a small miniquilt. The miniquilt was then mounted on the 12" x 12" canvas where I had mounted a slightly larger non-dimensional version of When Cropdusters Dream which I had printed on matte canvas. Acrylic paint was then used to create the border details. (Click to see the entire Visual Thinking series on my website www.yolandafundora.com) PS. The miniquilt was assembled by my loving domestic partner, Pamela Zave, who is a research scientist and a very talented art quilter. In fact, you would really enjoy seeing her work at. www,pamelazave.com.
This is another image also from my fine art web site where my textile and fine art world come together, No. 2 from Salon des Textiles Refusés. To see and read more, click here.

I worked as art director of Peggy Karr Glass from 1999 to 2005. Peggy Karr Glass is the premiere American Fused Enamel Glass studio. While there I enjoyed the company of many talented artists and the unusual experience of seeing the your designs all the way through the manufacturing process and out the door to customers. Above and below you can see three of my favorite designs from that era that I believe are still available.They are Gerbera (above), and Martini and Margarita (below).

Three dimensional design has always held great interest for me. It was a lot of fun designing utilitarian objects for the home office while working on the Holiday Quilts book with Barbara. Below is my favorite shape from the book. The black and white photo in the desk caddy is a picture of my parents at the dating stage in Havana, Cuba in the 1940's. The color picture is of me and the daughter of the Hong Kong manufacturer for whom I designed an entire line of soft toy products. The toys on the cover of the BowTie catalog (except for the checkered cow and the wooden bear with umbrella) are some of the work I did with him.


Some of my most favorite assignments are a series of about 90 figurative ornamensts I designed between 1991 and 1994 of characters from children's stories for Department 56. The Alice in Wonderland and theTwelve Days of Christmas were the most popular. Below is the Queen ornament in her best "Off with their heads!" moment. Every 5 years we celebrate the hoidays at home by pulling out of storage all the storybook characters to decorate the sturdiest tree we can find (the ornaments are on the large side)and we throw a special open house to share the tree with our friends and neighbors. We can't seem to manage doing it every year and besides we like letting time go by so the figurines become like old friends we haven't seen in a long time.

And last but not least, I have a real love for logo design. Here are 2 of my recent favorites. One is for a cigar club and the other is for a Spanish/ English bilingual children's book press for which I've illustrated and designed a book whose cover you can also see below. This book is available as of September 2007. I'm currently working on another children's book for them.