Sally Dutko calls her vibrant fiber art wall hangings "fabric paintings," and her work so impressed the jury at the 2005 Fine Arts Quilts national exhibition in Memphis last summer that she walked away with the First Place Award.

But don't confuse her work with bed quilts.

"I have never made a bed quilt," says Dutko emphatically. An art quilt, she explains, is a contemporary artwork that explores aesthetic concerns common to the visual arts while retaining some relationship to the quilt from which it descends.

When she is not attending to the details of her day job as director of Cornell University's Office of Publications and Marketing Services, Dutko is often found in her studio using cloth surfaces like a canvas to play with colors, textures and patterns, and she combines machine with hand stitching.

"I dye and paint fabrics and sometimes manipulate them by tearing, burning, folding, twisting and embellishing with beads, shells, stones and found objects," she says. "Working in mixed-media allows your imagination to explore and use any kind of material. The possibilities are endless."

Dutko, who received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union in New York, welcomes visitors to her studio year-round by appointment. A large selection of her works can be viewed during Ithaca Art Trail weekends or at the Ithaca Artists Market in July. She also is listed on the Ithaca Art Trail Web site http://www.ArtTrail.com. Recently she appeared in a Home and Garden Television (HGTV) national segment on fiber artists at work in their studios.

Dutko says she always has several projects going simultaneously that may entail quite different techniques. In addition to dedicating time to her art evenings and weekends, she attends "creativity retreats" where she devotes entire days to experimenting with fabrics. Occasionally she takes on commissioned work since she enjoys challenging projects.

"My artwork provides balance in my life," she says. "It allows me to be innovative and experimental, [and] I hope those traits carry over into my Cornell work environment."