N.E.W.S
I spent Saturday morning at the last NEWS (New England Weavers Seminar) trustees meeting before the 2011 conference on July 14th-17th. Many hard-working guild members were in attendance, putting it all together. There is a juried gallery show, a juried fashion show, a faculty show, a special exhibit, many fantastic weaving and weaving-related classes, tours (more about that later . . .) and more. I feel incredibly lucky to have this conference in my back yard.
I also want to mention that Carol Birtwhistle is teaching a beginning weaving class from Thursday – Sunday with LOOMS provided. It is an incredible opportunity for someone to get intensive beginning instruction with an excellent teacher without having to commit to weeks or months of classes.
Now, back to the tours. My guild (with me at the helm) is in charge of tours. I put together three very interesting (in my opinion) tours which included behind-the-scenes access to archived textile collections and presentations by textile curators. Sadly, we have had to cancel two of the tours because of low numbers. I am bummed! However, we are running a trip to The American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Ma. We will get to see a selection of their archived textiles with curatorial commentary and a tour of the museum (which is incredible).
The conference is held at Smith College in Northampton, MA. You can check out all the details at:
www.newenglandweaversseminar
In case you haven’t figured it out, this is a plug for NEWS. Come, hang out with wicked weavers, submit some weaving to one of the shows (many diverse categories of awards), see a high-energy fashion show of hand-woven garments (this is all hand-woven, not a blend of fiber-arts techniques) and revel in the wonders of weaving!
