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Michelle Dompierre Southern - Profile
If you've ever received a Virtual Cocktail @the Mmmartini Lounge, you're already familiar with Michelle Dompierre Southern's artwork, design, and devotion to kitsch. Michelle is a trained Pharmacy Technician specializing in compounding and alternative medicine who veered off her chosen career path in favour of the more creative arts. As a freelance writer, she contributes regular weekly columns about photography and cocktails. She has been a Contributing Editor for Graphic Goo (detailing her specialized digital art techniques for professional graphic artists and web designers) as well as Chick Divas (a top-five radio station at mp3.com, where she was also asked to be the Music Director for the Lounge genre).
Michelle has been an active and positive member of the online community for over ten years: she has served as a Community Leader for GeoCities and acted as a mentor for new writers and editors. In "meatspace" her volunteer efforts have also been on a global scale. Michelle serves locally within the schools as a regular volunteer, and as Director of Information and Media Technologies for a local health care council charged with bringing doctors and health practitioners to an underserviced area. She founded The Playground Project which raises funds for a paediatric orthopaedic unit in London's Health Science Centre (Ontario, Canada) combining her songwriting and producing skills with online collaboration to raise funds. Michelle worked closely with the Director of the Blankets of Love foundation, tasked with entire design, programming, and maintenance of their web site with original graphics, creating an online presence not only to inform and educate, but serving as a launchpad for media relations and promotion. She has also launched and headed several quilt-related projects including a group raising funds for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
Michelle has been an avid and passionate stitcher for over 20 years. She is an accomplished cross-stitch and silk ribbon embroidery artist, creating original patterns and designs as well as courses to teach silk ribbon embroidery. She was a First Place prize ribbon recipient for Native Indian beadwork in First Nations Arts contest and art exhibition. Michelle has designed many original patterns, templates, and kits for needlework, quilting, and crochet. As an avid and passionate quilter, she has sewed more than 50 projects in less than one year, creating new patterns and discovering new techniques for innovative results. Her mantra is Think outside the blocks and encourages visitors to her Suite101 site to contribute their own ideas, comments, and suggestions (you can contact her at sewingneedlework@suite101.com).
Michelle lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two daughters where she writes, quilts, sews, and works on her current project: a book on cocktail-inspired quilt patterns. Michelle's new book, which she both wrote and illustrated, is called Dessert Cocktails: Classic and Contemporary After-Dinner Drinks and is available world-wide January, 2007. For more info about Michelle and her work, visit her website.