We recently took a little trip to Michigan, a state I've never explored before and it was beautiful. From the amazing turquoise waters of Lake Michigan (I thought you had to go to the Caribbean to see such lovely water) to the fruit trees, lavender farms (we hit two of them) art and food.A day spent on the beach relaxing was capped off with a visit to one of the many wineries. We sipped some wine at Mari Vineyards while overlooking the lake.
A visit to the Dennos Art Museum was the perfect thing for a dreary day. A wonderful show by Gerhart Knodel was on display. It is always a nice surprise when I happen upon a show by a well known textile artist. I was intrigued with his work because it was inspired by pieces of a Chinese textile that had been cut into pieces and he played a version of a surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, to extend and explore the images on the textile. You can watch a very interesting 22 minute video of him talking about his work here.
I always feel excited when fall starts and now that I'm back from vacation I've started teaching one of my favorite classes at the Textile Center of Minnesota, Interlace Embroidery. It's an eight week class and we all get to learn a lot of embroidery stitches, techniques and get to know each other. I even get to see finished works by the students, something that never happens in short form classes. I hope you are all having a wonderful beginning of autumn.
I'll leave you with a fierce little transformer floating his way around Lake Michigan and a beautiful wall of drying lavender.
