Meeting Report- November 17, 2018

Studio Art Quilt Associates
Meeting Minutes for November 17, 2018, Overland Park, KS at the
Lackman Library, Lenexa, Kansas

The meeting started with a welcome and introductions all around. Ten members attended including one new member Michele Dowdell. Andrea Luliack’s was acknowledged for a 3-hour drive from Oklahoma to get to a meeting. She is a valued regular member! The Cindys gave an update on their four SAQA regional fund raiser presentations in Edmond, OK, North Kansas City and Lawrence, KS. The presentations went well and they were greeted with appreciative audiences. After each of our presentations, several attendees expressed interest in SAQA and thanked us for the information.

Since the last quarterly meeting the Cindys also had the opportunity to visit Stillwater, OK to meet the Director of the Modella Gallery. Modella will be exhibiting our De.light/FULL show November 7th – December 14th, 2019. In addition to the show they are very interested in having small quilted
pieces to sell in the gallery while the show is on display. If you are interested in sending items for sale PLEASE CONTACT Valeria Zayat-Bloodgood at vzb2@yahoo.com directly and cc the Cindys. Let Valerie know your connection to SAQA and the show and what you have to offer for sale. You do not have to have a piece in the show to sell small items. She knows what her audience is interested in, and she may ask for digital images.

The Cindys are talking with two well-known textile artists about the possibility of coming to our region for a workshop in 2019, Deb Boschert (deborahsstudio.com) and Joanna Alberta (joannealberda.com). You may want to visit their websites.

This year’s 12x12 SAQA Auction Quilts are due mid-January. We are finalizing the galleries for exhibit before sending to SAQA. Contact the Cindys with any questions. idyllways@aol.com and/or
cbren588@gmail.com. The Cindys brought the SAQA Trunk Show they’ve been using in their presentations to our regional guilds. It is made up of 58 original quilts from members all around the world. In addition to the fun of seeing all these inspirational pieces we decided to use them in a mini jurying exercise. First we divided the trunk show into two random piles and attendees into two
groups. Then we informed them that they are jurying a quilt show and they have to pick the ‘Best in Show’. It was a blind jurying process, that is, they could not turn the quilts over to find out who made them. After 20 minutes they switched and did the same for the other quilt pile. There were some
spectacular quilts, both in technique and content and they had a tough decision to make. The question is: did both groups select the same quilts as Best in Show, and what does this mini exercise say about the quilt jurying process? Answer: No, they didn’t, and it says a lot about the judge’s expertise, personal preferences, favorite color, time of day, etc. We had a good discussion.

Then, what else? Show and Share!

Winner of the door prize was Karen Hansen.

The next meeting is scheduled for February 16, 2019, 11 am in the Pickard Room at the Central Resource Library, 9875 W 87th St, Overland Park, KS 66212.

SAQA KS/MO/OK Regional: May 19, 2018 Meeting Notes.

The meeting starting with introductions. There were 15 attending including 4 guests.
One of the guests, Merete Veian is a SAQA member all the way from Norway. She has
been visiting the US for a couple of weeks and we were lucky to have her join us.
Cindy P and Cindy B shared their impressions of the SAQA Annual Conference in April
in San Antonio, Texas. The first two days were devoted to Representative activities and
workshops. It was an opportunity to network with other reps and share their successes
and lessons learned. The conference was packed with speakers, Breakout Sessions
and a favorite – Lighting Talks, 16 fast and focused presentations, each only 6 minutes
long, and on a wide range of topics. If you get an opportunity to go to next year’s
conference, take it. Everyone is very welcoming and friendly and it’s in San Jose,
California!

Cindy B announced an Oklahoma venue has agreed to show our 2019 exhibit
‘de.light/Full’. Modella Gallery in Stillwater, Oklahoma has confirmed the dates of
November 7 – December 14, 2019. As a reminder: de.light/Full premiers July 12, 2019
at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri. It will then travel to the
Modellla Art Gallery, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. It is also scheduled at the Albrecht-
Kemper Museum of Art, in St Joseph, Missouri June 13 – September 13, 2020.
We have approached two venues in Indiana. Stay tuned.

Cindy B talked briefly about transitioning the next Regional Reps. It’s not too early to
consider stepping up and playing a bigger role in our activities and/or planning on
becoming the next Regional Rep(s). If interested, you are welcome to shadow us at
any time. We generally meet for at a Panera once a month to talk over what we want to
do and split up the tasks going forward. Most of the behind the scenes work is done
with email.

Linda Frost gave a ‘Member Spotlight’ presentation. Her transition from her earlier art
quilt experience to her current work is truly inspiring. Everyone commented on her color
choices and use of hand stitching to enhance each piece. (Can you add to this?)

The group shared “Show and Tell” and a couple volunteered to have their piece
critiqued by the group.

Our door prize went to Jane Bonachi. Next meeting will be on August 18 th .

SAQA Regional Quarterly 2/17/18 Meeting Notes

We met at the Central Resource Library in Overland Park, Kansas at 1pm and started with a welcoming and introductions.  There were 14 members in attendance.

The ‘business’ portion of the meeting included a discussion of the Auction Quilts.  Cindy P and Cindy B combined the 12x12s received with a couple of extra quilts from member to create a ‘Small Works’ Exhibit at the Shirley Stiles Gallery in Westwood Kansas.  There were 19 quilts in all. See photos on Facebook. The show was very well received, and we are considering doing it again next year.

The Auction Quits will also be on display at the KAW Valley Quilt Guild Show in Lawrence Kansas April 7 & 8.

Immediately after the KAW Valley Quilt Guild show, a great majority of these pieces will go directly to Harper’s for exhibit for about a month approximately April 11 to May 11.   After that, all exhibitors will be contacted to be confirm disposition of their 12x12’s: return to maker or send on to SAQA annual auction.

Cindy P made a request for more Auction Quilts from our region.

Jim Brown gave our first ‘Member Spotlight’ presentation.  He had been selected by the Director at the UCM Gallery of Art and Design to give a presentation to the students and we asked him to give the same presentation at our meeting.  He talked about his background as an architect, his introduction to quilting, and brought a number of his amazing quilts that show his artistic progression and skill as an artist.   It was a very interesting presentation and we very much appreciated seeing his body of work.

Linda Frost graciously accepted an invitation to be our next Member Spotlight at the May meeting.   We look forward to that and hope you can attend.

Anyone interested in a future Member Spotlight presentation, just let us know.  

We are a large region and our members are pretty far flung.  Starting with the next newsletter, we hope to have 2-3 member bios.  We may never meet some of our members but we’d like to know who they are and not just a name on a roster.  Cindy P will be contacting members and asking them to write a bio (up to a page) including information about their art work and experience, of course, but also about their family life, other interests … anything they’d like us to know about them including a photo or two of the member and a piece of their work if they so choose.  Names will literally be pulled from a hat (okay, maybe a bowl) then Cindy P will ask those members to please write their bio for inclusion in the next newsletter. Each of those members will have about 6-8 weeks to submit it to Cindy P.

We had another critique exercise and discussion with the group. The intention is to feel more comfortable with the concept of critiquing and being on the receiving end of a critique.  

Then we did Show and Share.  Several attendees brought current works.  Cindy B showed a small quilt titled ‘Ancient Chinese Ruins’ and also brought the drawings and images she used as inspiration and during the process of creating the piece.  

Our next quarterly meeting is May 19.