BIO: Janet Conner is an avid rug hooker who has been pulling loops since 1979. Graduating from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, she spent 30 years teaching Elementary Art in southern Maine, while raising a busy family. After retirement in 2005, Janet was able to work at rug hooking and fiber arts full time, launching her web based business, which offers a line of her own patterns as well as rug hooking supplies and equipment, books, and natural dye recipe cards. She teaches fiber arts in her home state of Maine and throughout the States, plus Bermuda, England, and Canada, with a specific focus on art history and the inspiration found in both fine art and folk art. In addition to rug hooking, she also teaches miniature punch needle, proddy, and penny rug techniques.
Twenty-five years of studying and repairing antique rugs has influenced Janet’s love of old fashioned methods and timeless motifs. She has contributed chapters on cleaning and repair of antique rugs to Rug Hooking Magazine’s book Finishing Hooked Rugs. She co- authored Rug Hooking Traditions with James & Mercedes Hutchinson, which debuted with the Hutchinson Exhibit, during Rug Hooking Week of August of 2016. In 2020, Rug Hooking Magazine/Ampry published Janet’s Magnificent Hooked Rugs: Inspired by the Art of Western Civilization. She is currently at work on a follow up book covering rugs inspired by Non-Western Art: Indigenous World Cultures.
Janet’s rugs have appeared in Celebration of Hand-Hooked Rugs XXII, Rug Hooking Magazine, Hooked Rugs Today 2004, and galleries throughout New England. Her greatest joy is to foster the success of her students; many of whom have made rugs in her classes that have been featured in Rug Hooking Magazine.