Friday, December 5, 2014

finally slowing down...?

Don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote about quiet weeks ahead of me, after I returned from Veldhoven end of OctoberIt has been anything but. And although I am not going to go into detail about all the things that I have been trying to finish or organize, for a while I really did not know whether I would make it until Christmas.
But after Monday’s trial session for the SAQA webinar to be aired this coming Tuesday, a three day computer class for which I commuted to Munich early this week, and, finally, a belated shipping of November’s fabric club collection today, things might slow down a little bit now.
I hope.

The trial session indeed was a high stress factor – I had to prepare a powerpoint presentation which will be shown to the attendants, and I have always avoided doing powerpoint... I wasn’t sure whether I could do a good talk on me as a quilter – whereas I had never had much of a doubt about giving a talk about my linguistic research when I was still doing that. But only after the trial session was finished Monday afternoon, and I felt relaxation settling in, did I realize how much that had been nudging me. Well, the trial went well, I will make a few changes to the presentation, and it should be a lot of fun. If you’re a SAQA member and haven’t signed up yet – perhaps you still can? The two other international artists who will be presenting a talk about their environments and how these influence their work are Barbara Lange and Alicia Merret
We had fun during the trial, and I am sure it is going to be a fun hour.


This photo shows my reflection in the window
right after we finished the trial - I thought I
would show it here as you never get to see
what I look like during the talk itself.

My computer class taught me a lot. First of all, how thankful I can be for living the life I do, without having to commute to Munich every day. There are quite a few people here who do – and it can work fine – but a two-hour commute from door to door every day, taking a seven o’clock train, with a return at night. Doesn’t leave you much time to do anything else. I did learn basic skilly in photoshop, too, which I have been using in a most amateur fashion, not really understanding what I was doing. Now I can get a picture that originally looked like this


to look like this. (The original actually looks more like the real day when the picture was taken, but hey, who cares!)


I can turn myself into a watercolour painting.




Or into a neon sculpture.




And many other things. What I really enjoyed was the class-room atmosphere. I took the class in a computer school for women – women teaching women on the computer. We had a very small class, only four pupils, which also made for a very pleasant learning atmosphere. And although I still don’t consider myself any kind of expert in processing pictures, I can do other things now than I used to. Of course, this will not exactly lead to less time spent on the computer...

But now only the Christmas baking is left as a real stress factor. Or...?

2 comments:

  1. I listened to the SAQA webinar and thought it was excellent. The different styles of art by each of you was thought provoking and I was taking notes. I am going to be visiting my son and his family in southern part of the Netherlands for Christmas and through New Years. If there is a fabric show in Munich or nearby, perhaps I could rent a car or take a train and visit it. I live in a very rural area so I am always looking for exhibits while I'm able to travel. By the way, I would never have known you were worried about the presentation. You were very interesting and I enjoyed hearing about your life and work.

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  2. Thanks, Jeanne - I am glad you enjoyed the webinar! And relieved that the nervousness did not come through, indeed, it was worse during our trial session the week before, but it is always good to have a little bit of adrenalin pumping through your veins when you are doing something like this!
    Munich is quite a distance from southern Netherlands, an eight-hour drive at least, there must be interesting exhibitions closer than that. For example, you could try this textile museum: https://www.krefeld.de/de/dtm/41-deutsches-textilmuseum/
    It is supposed to be very good.
    Even Heidelberg's museum is much closer, and easily accessible by train: http://www.museum-heidelberg.de/pb/,Lde/Startseite/Sammlung/Textilsammlung++Max+Berk.html
    Next time you come, let me know in advance, and we can try to arrange a meeting! There is going to be the OEQC in Maastricht end of October, starting in 2015. Perhaps you can arrange your visits accordingly. Greetings - Uta

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