FibreWorks Workshops and SDA Conference

Check out the website for SDABC

FibreWorks Studio & Gallery in Pender Harbour, is offering the following workshops in May. Jackie Abrams is an amazing basketry artist and teacher from Vermont, who uses heavy, hand-painted paper (cut with a pasta cutter!)  to weave her exquisite structures – so the process is great fun for surface designers. Check out her website.

The workshop info is as follows:

May 12 – 14, 2011 – Paper! Colour! Hexagonal Weave Baskets with Jackie Abrams – Workshop. Create baskets inspired by an Asian technique, the openwork hexagonal weave. Experiment with the possibilities of form, size and colour design. Some basket experience is helpful but not essential. 

May 16-18, 2011 - (Re)Cover the Surface with Jackie Abrams – Workshop. A woven basket, a gourd or even a plastic bowl, can be altered by changing the surface.  It can be given a new skin of colour and texture by covering the surface with paper, fabrics, paints, mediums, beads and found objects. Explore materials and be surprised at what you discover.

Contact Yvonne at 604-883-2380 or email 

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SDA Conference 

Every two years, the Surface Design Association holds a conference – this time it will be held from June 9 to June 12, 2011 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, with pre- and post-conference workshops and study tours. It seems we will have a large contingent of members from BC/Yukon attending so we hope to hear all about it on their return. It’s going to be an amazing lineup – this link will take you to the conference info.

Two of our members from BC will be featured there with solo exhibitions:

Jane Kenyon, Transformation, Joan Mondale Gallery, Textile Center, June 8  - July 16, 2011.

Jane’s website. Her work Fracture is shown in the image above. 

Vernal Bogren Swift, In the Garden, American Association of Woodturners Gallery, March 1 - June 26, 2011. 

Her work This is Breathing is shown above.

And of course many of our members have submitted work to the members' show, Merge and Flow.

I’ve attended the SDA conference twice before and found it incredibly inspiring – mind-blowing exhibitions, thought-provoking lectures and panel discussions, the temptations of a trunk show and a vendors’ market, and many wonderful opportunities for networking with fellow fibre artists. You won’t regret it if you decide to attend.