Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Catching Up with Summer - Fleece Festival & August Solo Exhibition

Yarn Painting Workshop at the Woodstock Fleece Festival 2017!

Course registration is open for the Woodstock Fleece Festival 2017 and we are so excited to be offering a workshop this year called Yarn Painting - Creating Natural Works of Art with Beeswax and Wool. The festival is on October 14th at the Woodstock Fair Grounds and features all things fleece from shearing to weaving. What a great fall adventure!

Detail of The Buzzard Tree, Transcending - Works in Wool and Wax Solo Exhibition  

With August in view, I am putting the final touches on The Harrison Park series to be shown in my first 'official' solo exhibition titled Transcending - Works in Wool and Wax, being mounted in the Rotunda Gallery in Kitchener City Hall for the month of August.

It feels like I have been working on this series forever, and it has been almost a full year. I have learned a lot about taking on a long term commitment like this, including the fact that I will get bored and try to rebel against myself! It is interesting to be both child and parent and coax yourself to keep on track towards a deadline. I also learned that I seriously underestimate the amount of time it will take to complete a piece because I keep forgetting about the dreaded unforeseen circumstance (aka life.)

Overall, however, this has been a valuable experience in so many ways and I am pleased with the pieces that have resulted from it. I am also bursting with new ideas that have piled up in my sketchbook waiting for attention. Soon, my pretties, soon.

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Emergence by Kate Pautler, St. Jacobs workshop 2017

We had a fantastic time, as usual, at the yarn painting workshop at the St. Jacobs Mennonite Church during the Waterloo Region and Beyond! Quilt and Fibre Art Festival this year. I appreciate so much the work of the committee members to organize the workshops and create a magnificent display of quilts in the church. Our workshop discussions were colourful and the group became my best spokespeople by the end!

Special thanks to Kate, who not only sent me an image of her evocative finished piece 'Emergence', but also was kind enough to gift me an extra heating gun for my artistic pursuits. Thank you, Kate!

Also a special hello to Amelia, who impressed us all with her humour and independence, keeping her 80 plus years young and still trying new things.

Happy summer, folks, and keeping Amelia's adventurous spirit in mind, I hope this summer finds you trying something new!