Anne and Mark's Art Party

This past Saturday I taught a Buttonhole Stitch Binding workshop in my studio - but I only took one photograph of my class samples - that's it.  I love sharing pictures of workshops in Wishi Washi Studio but one photo does not a blog post make. I think I didn't take more pictures because my mind was still at Anne and Mark's Art Party. The Art Party is hard to describe so I'll let you read about it here.

The Art Party gets bigger each time it happens and this year it was held at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds (it started out many years ago at Anne and Mark's home)and included over 300 artists and performers with 30,000 square feet of exhibit space. This was my fourth year exhibiting at the Art Party and I decided to show my most recent installation: Phinnea's World.

On Friday, September 19th I arrived at the Fairgrounds to install. Walls were constructed in this building to create a labyrinth of exhibit spaces - some wide open and others intimate. I was assigned an intimate room-like space with three walls - perfect for Phinnea!

I started moving Phinnea in...

and by the end of the day her nest was properly feathered...

Phinnea's World photographed by r.r. jones

Phinnea's World consists of creatures that my fictitious character, Phinnea, has created to replace the people that she has left behind. Some of them she misses and others she wishes she had never met. She creates these creatures, and makes their drawn and embroidered portraits, in a room that she only enters when she pines for her previous life.

These are a few of her creatures (they are a little bit cute and cuddly but also sharp and pokey):

 

"Can Do No Wrong"

"Likes to Be Invited but Often Declines"

"Guardian Angel *self-appointed"

The next evening, was the Art Party opening Gala. There was art, performances, art cars, a spoken word lounge and food trucks, and more art - it was everywhere.

 The building remained open for visitors during the four days following the opening gala and on Thursday night there was a closing party which included a FashionArt show.

At the end of the night, at 10:00 p.m., the exhibit is over and artists start to pluck their art off the wall, dismantle their installations and +++poof+++ it is all gone...just like that. It is a tremendous amount of work for six days of exhibit time but so worth it. Fulfilling even. There is something about an event coming and going so quickly that includes a huge collective effort and that doesn't have a chance to get stale. 

Some snippets of Phinnea's World:

and, this was the room at 11:00 at night following the closing party:

Poof! All gone - nothing left but my power drill and platform shoes.

A very special thanks to Anne Sconberg and Mark Henderson for pulling off the biggest, craziest, lightening fast art exhibit ever.

I look forward to the next one.