Detail of a Donna Loraine Contractor tapestry
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Donna Loraine Contractor was born in Waukegan, Illinois and received a BA in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in Santa Fe. She has been weaving for the past 15 years and has made tapestry weaving her main focus. After a year in North India working with a crafts cooperative, and designing tapestry borders for local weavers, she now resides in New Mexico producing tapestries, rugs and pillows with a Southwest flavor.

"The landscapes of the Southwest provide an endless array of forms and colors. I try to capture these in my tapestries while using them as a basis to explore personal interests in world folk art motifs and color studies. The power of the metaphor inherent to the process and product of the woven landscape allows me to extend the experience and enjoyment of a place in a sense deeper than intellectually.

When someone says to me...'Oh, have you been to such and such a place too?'... and I see them enjoy that special place again, then I feel my work has served a good purpose. Strength and durability are very important to me so I use a strong cotton warp and 100% wool weft." The colors are hand-dyed on lustrous wool...everything from brilliant to subdued.

Donna has done large commissions and exhibits in several galleries in New Mexico. Most recent awards and commission have been Public Arts Commission Award for City/County Government Buildings of Albuquerque, and a Tryptich for a private residence in Albuquerque.

Recently the Art in Embassies Program bought one of ther tapestries for the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. Donna was awarded Acclaimed Artist status by the New Mexico Arts, the public art division of the state, and a large tapestry was installed in the Children, Youth and Family Department Building in Albuquerque. One of her tapestries will be on display in Prescott, Arizona in the Fiber Celebrated 2003 exhibit in conjunction with the Intermountain Weavers Conference, Summer 2003. Donna Loraine was also on the the 62 artists chosen from over 300 to exhibit in the Originals 2003, Traces of the Journey Show at the Albuquerqe Mueseum, Summer 2003, put on by the New Mexico Women in the Arts.

Douglas Kent Hall, in The Thread of New Mexico, says "Contractor combines unlikely dynamic forms with a scintillating palette to achieve an evocative and compelling style of weaving. She utilized traditonal....concepts as well as certain graphic constructs that fueled the work of many twentieth-century painters and brings to contemporary tapestry a freshness that is sometimes startling."

She lives with her architect husband and their children in Albuquerque. In 1997 she was invited to participate in the Art in Embassies Program, Washington, DC.