Woot!

Elizabeth Adams-Marks and I are thrilled to announce that we were awarded a Surface Design Association Small Events Grant for our international exhibition From the Inside Out that opens August 18 at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville department of Art and Design. Irit Dulman will be sending work from Israel, and Fabienne Rey of the Netherlands, and Rio Wrenn from Portland, Oregon will join us in Illinois for workshops and artist talks. We have a blog devoted to the exhibition at http://exhibition-fromtheinsideout.blogspot.com/ 

Had to update the flier with the announcement:

By the way, there are still openings in both workshops! 
Visit the blog or write me at shiborirust[@]yahoo[.]com for registration information.

SDA News Blog makes me giddy! Thanks Marci Rae McDade

Blessings have come my way in more ways than one lately. 

Last week my former professor Laura Strand head of textiles at SIUE invited me to be visiting artist for her advanced students.  (That's a detail of her work to the left which is a collaboration piece using my rusted silk as the weft in her weaving.)  I am excited--yet terrified (as I usually am prior to teaching).  I'm making preparations, pulling out my rusted and organically printed fabrics and typing notes.  The class is next week.  Oh my!  Laura says the class is small, but there is a general invitation being issued to all departments regarding my lecture.  Yikes!

Preparations like this always make me crazy.  I fly around in a tizzy and distract myself endlessly from the task at hand.  So tonight when I was FINALLY going to get something done I checked my email.

And there IT was.  An email from Luanne Rimel at Craft Alliance with the announcement that Marci Rae McDade, now the editor of Surface Design Journal, has finally published an article about last fall's Innovations 2011 in St. Louis, the textile event I've written about in several posts.  Last year my life was consumed in curating and participating in Collaboration: Reaping and Sewing. 

Composite view of Collaboration: Reaping and Sewing exhibit looking to the back of gallery at Jacoby Arts Center

Innovations encompasses many shows in 20 some galleries around St. Louis and St. Charles in Missouri and Edwardsville and Alton in Illinois.  The openings and run dates of the shows vary quite a bit, some starting as early as August and some running late into November and December.  The biggest event however is the weekend mid September with many openings on Friday, followed by the keynote address and the "in the city" bus tour on Saturday of some 11 galleries and ending with a party for the artists at the private home of some fiber art collectors in St. Louis (an amazing collection!).   It was an exhausting day with several thrills along the way, but perhaps the most interesting of all was hearing Marci Rae McDade's keynote address at the History Museum.  She is a fabulous speaker with a seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of both historical and contemporary textile art.

Marci came along for the ride on the bus tour and I got to meet her briefly.  Thanks to a hint from Jo Stealey who has met Marci before, Marci said she wanted to see the shows in Illinois before returning to Oregon.  I made a few late night phone calls (from the party) and arranged for someone to open the Edwardsville Arts Center the next day which is usually closed on Sundays.  Laura Strand who curated the show there met us and afterwards we all drove up to Alton to see the collaboration show that Jo, Laura and I along with Erin Vigneau Dimick, Nina Ganci and Erin Cork worked on together. 

I can't tell you what a thrill it was to spend nearly 3 hours of private time with Marci that Sunday, getting to discuss my work and that of my colleagues.  She was very encouraging, especially regarding my taking the next step to write about and create a catalog of the show.  Everywhere that weekend, Marci was snapping photographs and taking notes.  She promised that she would include my show in the article and she was true to her word AND HOW!!.

I AM GIDDY!   See the article here.  The best is saved for (almost) last.  Woo hoo.
Love you Marci Rae McDade!
Thank you so much.

OK, back to work...

Long Day

I spent most of the day Monday at the Department of Art & Design at SIUE making visits to several graduate and upper level classes.  As a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Art, I volunteered (along with two of my colleagues) to make presentations on the upcoming art auction that provides the funding for the visiting artist program plus many other projects for art at SIUE.   The goal:  to convince students it is in their best interests to donate art for the auction.  Hope they took the info to heart.

The real treat came at the end of the day when I returned to the fibers studio to visit with my professor and friend Laura Strand and fellow student, teacher and book artist Elizabeth Adams Marks who is working on her masters in art ed now.  Just spending a few minutes with these two gets my juices flowing.  Elizabeth and I used to exhibit side by side at ARTEAST.  I first met her when she was working on her BFA as I was working towards my MFA.  Laura was instrumental in turning me from traditional printmaker to textile artist. 

Oh my, I was so sleepy when I got home, I couldn't keep my eyes open to watch the medal performances for Olympic Ice Dancing.  Dang!  The last pair were in the kiss and cry booth when I woke up.   So I came downstairs to check email and discovered some really great news.  The SDA website has listed my blog on the Member Website list.  Woo Hoo!!  

Future plans for this blog include creating some links to my favorite sites and fellow artists, especially the group I came to know and admire through grad school.  And, I promise the next post will finally debut pics of my outdoor studio.   The pictures were taken last spring and summer so they should provide a nice contrast to the cold, gray days we've been experiencing here in the midwest.