April in My Studio and Beyond

To say that April is quiet month where I live is an understatement. Which means that it is a great month for travel, writing, and art making with few interruptions. So this post will be a bit of a diary of my projects and whereabouts over the past 3 weeks.

The colorful photo above is the catalog cover of the gorgeous art quilt exhibit at the Wayne Art Center a bit northwest of Philadelphia. I went there as part of the Studio Art Quilt Associates annual conference, held in downtown Philadelphia. The conference included great talks, lots of interaction with terrific artists, and renewed energy for the whole field of art quilting. If you want to see the art made and promoted by SAQA, click here. Lots of diversity and skill to be seen.

In addition to the conference itself, it was wonderful to see some of Philadelphia's attractions, including the quite astonishing Magic Garden, located on and around South Street.

Me, taking those Too Many Photos

 

As an added bonus, it was SPRING there! I drove home in a blizzard, and we still haven't see much green. Good thing the summer is glorious here.

The other big project this month is my turn as the month of April artist-in-virtual-residence on the fabric surface design blog "... And Then We Set It on Fire." I am so honored to be part of this group of accomplished fabric artists. If you are interested in fabric surface design, you might want to join and follow.

For the "Fire" blog, I'm writing about and showing images of fiber art with plants as both part of the media used to make the art and as subject matter. Here is one of my deconstructed screen printing projects, using an overwintered wood fern and some dried grasses from the Bloomingdale Bog Trail (to ground you locals).

 

There are several classes going on in the Pink House studio too. I'm especially enjoying the "Learn Drawing (and Some Botany)" and our monthly drawing group. And you haven't really seen the world until you look at box elder flowers under the dissecting microscope!!!

Can't help myself - I'm such a botany geek!