Surface Designers

We are at the midway point of the Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus Ohio. Artists grab fabrics from the piles on the tables and sewing machines hum. Earlier in the week there was an outbreak of fantastically elaborate beaded jewelry. The screen printers have assembled fabric books and the collagers have melded paper and fabric into intriguing compositions. Today, the loading dock became a studio for students experimenting with discharging---removing color from dark fabrics. The afternoon light flooded the dock as the students stirred the fabrics in the buckets. Suddenly I felt as if I was in a modern-day version of a Vermeer painting. For a moment or two, the grungy loading dock seemed romantic and beautiful.