Gina Lynette was born in Temple, Texas in 1971. She grew up in Knoxville, TN, spent several years on the beach in Boca Raton, FL, and now resides in Brentwood, TN. She is the mom of two great kids.
In her Monday through Friday life, she is the Deputy Director of Person-Centered Practice for DMRS. She is a life coach, facilitator and trainer, and has a BA in Organizational Management from Tusculum College. “I consider interactions with my network of precious friends to be a vocation of sorts,” Gina says. “My passion--true passion--is walking folks through the process of discovering their bliss. Whether I am working with a close friend, an individual coaching client, a private organization, or a huge statewide system; my candle burns so much brighter when I am able to point people in a positive direction.”
In the artistic realm, her photography has appeared on several magazine covers, and she collaborates on watercolor quilts/multi-media collages with her life partner, Ned Andrew Solomon.
“I have never considered myself artistic,” says Gina. “I was more of a crafter - crochet, weaving, quilling, tatting - and decorator - stenciling, sewing, painting, arranging. I learned those things by watching my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers create wonderful spaces in their homes. My childhood was filled with artistic folks, but none of them would have considered themselves artists.
”My great grandmother - we called her Granny - spent the long Virginia winters piecing, embellishing and finishing Crazy Quilts. I spent hours lusting over the beautiful fabrics and threads she used. It was an honor beyond any other to be gifted with one of Granny's lovely hand-pieced blankets. When people asked what she would charge for one, she'd laugh, count up the weeks and months of labor and say no one could afford it.
”I have always loved texture and color and pattern. I am drawn more to exploring these facets of painting and photography than to representing known objects. However, once we - Ned and I - laid down these colors and stepped away, they begged for more manipulation. Ned is braver than I am and encouraged me to carve up our pieces and reform them. I took a deep breath and cut several pieces into strips - recalling the quilting patterns I have admired all of my life - and began manipulating them until we both loved the results.
”That's the rule for everything we do--we work on it until we both love it.”
