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Author Archives: Astrid Bennett
the Museum Tour
Nasty floods obliterated our museum scene here in Iowa City in 2008, and FEMA is now deciding what it will contribute and what additional monies need to be raised. So, at the heels of the Surface Design Association Board Meeting Washington DC, I attended exhibits at the Textile Museum, and in the National Gallery [...]
Posted in African art, exhibitions, Museums
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ICON Gallery Exhibit, plus a night in Fairfield
Contemporary Art Quilts, ICON Gallery Contemporary Art Quilts of Astrid Hilger Bennett, Carol Coohey, BJ Parady and Judy Zoelzer Levine is featured exhibition at ICON Gallery in Fairfield, Iowa. What a wonderful installation: clean, light-filled and spacious, the best installation of my own work I’ve ever come across. This is ICON’s first-ever art quilt [...]
SDA Confluence Conference, part one
Tim Harding’s Exhibit at the Nash Gallery In June, I had the opportunity to attend Confluence, the biennial International Conference of the Surface Design Association. As an SDA Board member, I knew that my tasks at the Conference went beyond mere participation, —I am in charge of all the “state” or Area Representatives — but [...]
Anni Holm & the NetWorking Project
Iowa City’s celebrated Iowa Arts Festival took place June 3-5, inaugurated by a Gallery Walk at 17 downtown locations including Iowa Artisans Gallery, the gallery that I am associated with. On my rounds to check out artists at the art fair the next day, I discovered a tent with a knitting installation in progress. The [...]
Bumping into The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia
In mid-February, I attended the Buyers’ Market of American Craft as a buyer for Iowa Artisans Gallery. As we prepared to leave, we discovered our flight was canceled and rescheduled for late in the day. What to do in this lovely city? Our answer was to meander, walking the streets in ways we’d been unable [...]
Clouds, Sky, Mountains
Flying to Santiago, Chile via Dallas, where we had an overnight flight delay due to airplane mechanical difficulties. The surprising benefit: we flew over South America during daylight- I got to actually see land over Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, and the spectacular Andes in waning light of day. That was pretty darn cool. Most of the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized
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the sketchbook project- DONE!
My new years’ gift to myself: do the one studio thing I had the greatest need and drive for, starting to draw on a more regular basis. Along came The Sketchbook Project (see my October 18 post on drawing) with just enough deadline and incentive to make me finally commit. The result is not brilliant, [...]
Posted in drawing, sketching
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Bird talk…
Friday during a conference call, heard a fuss on the back porch, –looked out and saw a hawk clawing the screen to get out. Tried to shoo her to the door- she got sidetracked behind a table area. Me, afraid of big talons and unknown “Hawkish” behavior. Downy feathers swirling. Called my buddy Will, the [...]
Posted in Armadillo Arts, natural world, nature
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Potatoes + linocut tools = potato printing fun!
Reading several vintage books on printing from the 1960s and earlier, I kept thinking about exploring the versatile potato when teaching some simple printing classes. As a youngster, I never got to make potato prints, because carving the designs involved sharp tools. For my current explorations, I discovered linocut tools, which any adult or almost-adult [...]
Posted in printing
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Line by Line series in the New York Times: hone your drawing skills!
One of the wonders of the current digital media scene is being able to mix print and video information in the same article. I am intrigued by The New York Times’ Line by Line series (“about rediscovering the lost skill and singular pleasure of drawing”) and can’t resist posting about it here, though it’s Black [...]
Posted in drawing
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