Fiberlandia/Portland

No give-away this week-I’ll be posting that next week. I’m still catching up from a whirlwind 4 days at Fiberlandia, the SAQA Conference in Portland. I find myself still vibrating from the energy and ideas that arose during those 4 days! There were insightful break-out sessions, enlightening presentations, rich conversations with other artists…and then there was Portland.

Warning: I left my “real” camera in Montana and it was in transit as I was in Portland, so all these photos were taken with my smart phone-ugh.

Somehow this conference made it easy to make connections with other artists. I met so many new people and reconnected with friends. I even met Face Book friends:

I’ve been a FB friend with these two for some time and it was fun to meet Nancy Turbitt for the first time and Margaret Blank a second time. I greatly admire the work of both of them. I was lucky enough to have the winning bid on Margaret’s piece at the Spotlight Auction.

LTFS stands for Let The Fabric Speak. Margaret lives in central Alberta (Canada) and she snow dyed this piece, then stitched it intuitively as the fabric spoke to her. It reminded her of rose buds and the hope of spring after a long winter. I so enjoy the delicate hand stitching and the beauty of the fabric. There are zillions of tiny stitches that give a delicate texture to the piece, with areas of unstitched snow dye left to their own beauty.

I met my Face Book friend Janet McElroy through an on-line class. She in turn is a real life friend with Maggi Birchenough and wanted to make sure the two of us met-and we did! Maggi is a highly accomplished art quilter and dyer and has been a huge encouragement to Janet. I am sad to say that I really didn’t get much time to talk to Maggi. But isn’t it cool how Face Book can be a good thing sometimes?

I follow “Linda M Designs“, aka Linda McLaughlin too, and I have long admired her work. Linda has challenged herself to do hand stitching on her hand dyed fabric every day! And she actually does it. So I had to see her block of the day-lousy picture I know, but can you see the beauty of her hand dye and the lovely stitching? Guess I should have gotten a photo of her too-geez.

And I got to hang with some of my Northern California peeps too. It’s funny-sometimes you have to travel to a conference in another city to catch up with your friends from home! Can you tell from all the smiles how happy we  all were to be with other like-minded artists?

I had to include this fuzzy photo-this is how Jen Landau takes notes! She was a graphic facilitator in a previous life and this is a logical way to take notes for her. I sat near her and watched her create this, concurrent with the presentation-color and all.

The talent that was in the room when we all got together was mind boggling-look at those names! These were the members of the International Artist Panel. A vibrant discussion ensued between these artists and it was enlightening to hear about fiber art around the world.

On Saturday afternoon we were treated to various city/art tours led by Oregon members. We visited the exhibit A Sense of Place put on by MIX, a group of Portland fiber artists. Each artist created one hardscape and one softscape based on the structures and grounds of the Allison Inn and Spa in Newberg, OR.

This was interesting-the Laura Russo gallery was showing work by Jo Hamilton. Jo crochets portraits and mounts them onto a wire surface, leaving the tails to hang from the back of the piece. I’ve never seen work like that. Some of her portraits are from mug shots-there are some very interesting characters!

Of course we had to get some gelato! I giggle at this photo-to me it looks kind of like a family vacation photo: “Alright everyone line up, squint into the sun and act like you’re having fun!”.

The Oregon Region of SAQA had an exhibit up-“Exploring Layers”. Every single piece was great. I especially enjoyed this piece by Catherine Beard-the stark tree trunks against the abstract background were delightful.

There were two 3-d horse figures by Christina Brown in the exhibit. He (she?) has so much personality-the colors, the gesture, the varied textures, the stance. I’m left to wonder about the title-I don’t see a geographical reference to Rowenta. Could it be the iron?

The Spotlight Auction was a huge success. Members contributed 6″ x 8″ pieces that were then auctioned off to benefit SAQA. If I had unlimited funds, THIS would have been the piece I would have purchased in addition to Margaret’s piece. My piece sold for $500-I was floored!

Luck of the draw-this was the view from my room! Yes, that is Mount Hood. Portland has a mild climate, with few insects, so I left my window open the entire time I was there with the a/c off. It was bucolic to sleep with the night sounds of the city and the fresh air.

Even the Portland airport was filled with fiber art! This huge display of work by Bonnie Bucknam was impressive. Even though the scale was massive, the sunlight revealed the texture, colors and details  beautifully. Someday I want to work that big.

And there were two more airport exhibits! The Portland Modern Quilt Guild put up “The Bridges of Portland”, a really nice display. This piece by Susan Borger was nice balance between representational and realistic.

And High Fiber Diet put together “What’s Blue to You?”, with each piece being the same size. This amazing piece is a whole cloth indigo dye. Karen imagines snow melting and forming rivulets along the way. I don’t know a lot about shibori and other dye processes, but I know it must be pretty difficult to get all of that out of a whole cloth piece.

Mary made this piece to recall the feeling she got when the sun shone on the fir trees after weeks of dense fog. It is a quiet piece with lots of detail and I especially enjoy its ethereal feel.

Sara used a variety of techniques and fabrics to create this intriguing representation of reflections found on the windows of downtown Portland skyscrapers.

So much more happened in those 4 days: a student panel discussion, a panel with local artists, break-out sessions with Lyric Kinard and Sue Reno and a hands-on play space with all sorts of fiber and materials to try . There were many moments of revelation, clarity and new resolve. I can’t begin to put that all in words. It will show in my work in the future and maybe then I can point it out. Right now I am just overwhelmed-in a wonderful way!

The give-away of Sherri Lynn Wood’s book will be next week-I promise!