Color you can feel

Had a wonderful experience a couple weeks ago. I had the pleasure of attending the Connecting Threads Conference at Asilomar, on the Monterey Peninsula. What a great time! I took a class from Lura Schwarz Smith, using digital images in my textile work. Lura is a wonderful teacher, who made us do things we never thought we could do and teaching us so well, we can actually go on with the work at home. Lura guided us through the steps to convert a photograph into a quilted work of art. I did things I never thought I could do and loved the entire process, even though Lura kept us working. I took a couple photographs; one of my great-grandmother, which I drew on fabric and shaded it in sepia tones to make it into textile art. The other was a photo taken on the road when my grandparents moved from New Mexico to California in 1918. I took a small photo and converted it to a 21″x 26″ pattern for construction of another piece of wall art! We had the added advice of Kerby Smith, a well-known photographer turned digital fabric artist, who is Lura’s husband and the Artist-in-Residence that week at Asilomar. What a wonderful experience it was and it caused me to re-examine how to decide when and from whom I will take classes. I will now focus more on my own vision and on those who will forward that vision and give me the tools I need. I will not just go for a technique unless it’s one for MY work. I probably won’t take any more 1-day classes, as it’s hard to really go forward from a day’s class. What a great experience! And I got some wonderful photos of stuff on the beach to use in other work.