Busy, busy October!

So many things are going on this fall it's hard to keep the tasks sorted out!  With all of the "must do todays" and then the "can I even get to it today??" stuff I haven't had time to do a blog post in almost a month.  Yet, day by day, somehow things are getting completed.

Early in the month my husband and I attended the Folk Art Society of America conference in Raleigh, NC.  I was glad to be able to visit Mary Kircher's studio at Artspace while we were there.  Mary was my studio assistant at Penland this summer.  On the second visit to her studio during the First Friday gallery walk I ran into another person who'd also been in the Penland class--she was in town for an art educators conference.  That was loads of fun.  Mary's work is just beautiful and I was so happy to get to see her studio.

The FASA conferences are always filled with tours to quite interesting events and places, including visits to public and private collections of folk, self-taught, and/or outsider art.  This time we visited the Vollis Simpson Conservation Project, Clyde Jones's Critter Crossing in Bynum, and several of the potteries at Seagrove, among other places.  And, we made a visit to the Gregg Museum at NC State and the North Carolina Museum of Art.  This gigantic El Anatsui hanging was astounding... that's me at the right of the photo--that piece is huge!

This piece is called "Lines that Link Humanity"--a detail of the multiple pieces of discarded aluminum and copper wire he uses in the piece is shown below.

Needless to say, we both were in visual sensory overload by the time we left the conference.

As soon as we got home on the 8th we began tying up loose ends of preparations for the wedding that was to take place at our house on the 12th!  The weather turned out to be a glorious early fall afternoon for the event and everyone seemed to have a grand time.   Here's a closeup of some of the wedding flowers a couple of days later, just before we began to disassemble them.  The bride (our niece) and groom put the arrangements together.  She also prepared small jars of jellies for guests and had a mound of local apples for everyone.  Other treats, including personalized chocolate bars, were provided by her mother and the wedding cake was made by the groom's mother.  The whole event was a beautiful family affair.

I'd given the large feathers tapestry I'd completed earlier in the summer to my husband for our 30th wedding anniversary gift and he hoped I'd have it ready to hang for the wedding event.  Luckily, I was able to do it with the help of a local cabinet shop man who built the stretcher on which I mounted the tapestry and also the frame.   Here's the installation process as Jeff and Thomas put it up:

It's now hanging above several of the Bob Owens sculptures of birds that we have.  

Since the tapestry is so large and is now framed, I won't be showing it anywhere but here at home!

This week is also a bit hectic.  Pat Williams and I are teaching a one-day workshop at her studio on Saturday, the 19th, so I've been putting together several new things to share with the participants.  

The Tapestry Weavers South group will meet in Asheville on the 26th to see the exhibit that's currently on display at the Folk Art Center, "The Beat Goes On."  

November and December will be weaving time for me once more, I hope!