Tapestry rules! And did it ever rock the house during IWC…
The majority of the fiber works displayed were tapestry & the majority of awards went to tapestry! I am quite proud to be in the company of…
Kathe Todd-Hooker: ATA Award for Excellence in the Fiber Celebrated 2009 exhibit
Kathy Spoering: Excellence in Weaving in the Fiber Celebrated 2009 exhibit
Rebecca Mezoff: a triple whammy-- Best Use of Color in the Fiber Celebrated 2009 exhibit, People’s Choice 2nd place in the non-juried Intermountain Creations, & the tapestry that won Best Use of Color was featured on the exhibit postcard… go, Rebecca, what a woman!
And, something I am still trying to absorb, my canyon night, pictured above, won People’s Choice in the Fiber Celebrated 2009 exhibit! I was so shocked, that tears came to my eyes when it was announced & almost progressed to outright blubbering as I went to the stage to collect my award. I had a great many negative feelings about this tapestry & my weaving skills after I completed it, so much so that I had to put it away for awhile before I could even do the finishing on it. When I saw it hanging next to my painted hills tapestry on an inconspicuous wall at the artists’ reception, both pieces seemed to me to be so very small & insignificant compared to the other astounding works there. Then something interesting started happening during the reception… one by one, people began to come up to me to tell me how much they liked canyon night & describe to me where they thought it was: the Boundary Waters in Minnesota; the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; a lake in Oregon. They weren’t asking me, they were telling me-- special places that had special meaning in their lives. One woman even told me, almost insistently, that the one star in the tapestry was Venus, she was sure of it. I realized that she really needed it to be Venus (which it very likely is), so I said, “I think you’re right, it is!” & she walked away wearing a beatific smile. I can’t really even begin to express how very special this award is for me.
There were many wonderful things about the whole IWC experience…
the beautiful Fort Lewis campus in Durango
meeting Kathe Todd-Hooker & learning some great color blending techniques in her workshop
meeting Rebecca Mezoff (who was also taking Kathe’s workshop) & seeing her work in the exhibits
seeing Janet’s & Kathy’s tapestries in the exhibit
and last, but not in the least… the many adventures of traveling & rooming with Janie & Susan!
Some of those included: managing to pack all of our stuff & ourselves into my Land Rover even though Janie’s husband Don just shook his head & went back inside after he saw the conglomeration of boxes, suitcases, bags, Janie’s special chair, & a small ice chest piled on their grass (we could even still see out the back window after it was all stuffed in there!); the “Three Stooges” episode that ensued after we burst onto the scene in Kathe’s workshop, almost late, lugging all of our weaving paraphernalia, & trying to figure out where to set up in the nearly full room (Kathe graciously allowed us to move a table around so we could have access to an outlet for Janie’s light); figuring out that our little window fans helped to block the noise of the (drunken?) screaming laughter & loud conversations that emanated from the rooms surrounding ours late into the night, every night, even though I tried to scare some consideration into them by appearing in my pajamas & coke bottle glasses to ask them to be quiet; dancing around to cumbia music in our dorm room after some lovely crackers, cheese, wine, & weaving conversations while we were getting ready to attend the artists’ reception; and, after the last night conference activities held in the Concert Hall (Fashion Show, raffle, People’s Choice Awards announcements) having to sit down several times on the sidewalk with uncontrollable screaming fits of laughter as we were endeavoring to carry our raffle winnings of the night back to our room. I had won a basket stuffed full of balls of yarn which kept rolling away because the handle had broken, & we also had the basket that Kathe had won after we put in her raffle tickets for her, which was so large & heavy that it took two people to carry it. I haven’t laughed that much & that hard in a very, very long time. Was it the nearly full moon shining down through the cool sweetness of the mountain night air, the headiness of winning three things at once, or maybe, just maybe, the effects of the mystery beverage we had secreted into the Concert Hall in our travel mugs? I think it was all three.
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