This weekend, I travelled to Oklahoma City for a workshop on pop-up structures with Carol Barton. She is a paper engineer from Maryland, a wonderful person and a very good teacher. Her instructions were clear and she paced the workshop just right, so you didn't feel rushed or bored at any time.
We worked with very colorful paper and after a while, the table looked like it had been hit by a flourescent blizzard of scraps. I always thought I was a creative person, but some of the people in the workshop made me feel very uncreative by comparison. I was sitting next to Elia Woods (who is also an art quilter and textile artist) and she was doing some amazing work. She even created a pop-up table that was covered with bright scraps of paper like our workshop tables and had recognizable pop-up versions of people around it who were in the class, like the teacher.
Here is an example of what I made. I tend not to pour all my creativity into workshop models, but instead absorb the techniques and ideas. All the time I was working, I was thinking about how I could apply the principles to my own work. A while ago, I created a piece based on pop-up ideas that is appropriately called Popped. It is currently travelling with an exhibit through the Kansas Art Quilters group. Unfortunately, I realized too late that you couldn't really tell it was a pop-up when it was installed. This workshop gave me some wonderful ideas about better ways to make that more obvious when the piece is opened and just sitting there.
Ah well, you live and learn, which is why I took this workshop, obviously.
