4.26.2007

Field Trip

Tuesday was a field trip with a friend to visit the gallery in Burnsville that will be hosting the exhibition for our Book Salon for a month later this year. It's a lovely space. Coincidentally, Wendy Reid, the owner, serves with me on the Board of HandMade in America. She's brought in a wonderful selection of art at all price points. I noticed that the gallery participates in several community and philanthropic causes, usually by donating a percentage of sales of specific objects.

We stopped in at the Burnsville Town Center across the street from the gallery to see a quilt that my friend had heard about. It's amazing. The work of quilt artist Barbara Webster, it portrays key places, people and sights in the history of Yancey County, and surrounds them with representations of the four seasons. She used both old photographs and took over a thousand new ones. it's a masterpiece of design, and spans the entire lobby wall (the size is 24' x 7'). It's well worth making a trip just to see it.

After lunch (which was a delayed birthday treat for me), we traveled on to Penland School of Crafts, so that my friend could visit with a book artist friend she hadn't seen for nearly 20 years, Jana Pullman, who's been teaching a two-month class in leather bindings. I planned to visit Annie Fain Liden, who's currently a teaching assistant in Beth Ross Johnson's weaving class. Annie Fain is one of my bookmaking teachers as well as a friend, and it was a joy to catch up with her.

It was a long day, and a good one. I'm soooo looking forward to the book arts workshop I'll be taking at Penland this summer with book artist Laura Wait. I've been Googling Laura to learn more about her work and have found many examples of her books, which has made me even more enthusiastic about learning from her.

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