Floral Arrangement: Creating Fused Flower Quilts
Making beautiful flowers, concentric patterns, block design, and experimenting with exotic fabrics are all included in this class. Learn Sue’s layered construction technique for cutting, assembling, and arranging flowers as she has done in her extensive Flower Series quilts. This class will give you the opportunity to use gorgeous fabrics and expansive color—plus, the construction method can be applied to other designs. Create a study quilt (about 16”x16”), then move on to a larger, more involved art quilt with surprising complexity and power. (Those who are taking this class a second time can expand on these concepts.)
While pursuing a degree in molecular biology and a master's in biomedical illustration, Sue Benner created her vision of the microscopic universe in painted and quilted textile constructions. Her early work propelled her to become a studio artist in 1980, working primarily in the medium that later became known as the Art Quilt.
An innovator in her field, Benner creates complex dyed and painted textiles combined with recycled fabrics to form collaged fields of pattern, color, and beauty. Her work is shown world-wide in galleries, US embassies and museums including the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, National Quilt Museum, Neville Public Museum and the Museum of Geometric and MADI Art.
Her quilts have been juried into Quilt National eight times, recently winning the Most Innovative Use of the Medium award. She served as a juror in 2009.
A respected educator, she lectures and teaches workshops nationally and internationally in the areas of surface design, textile collage, fused quilt construction and artistic inspiration. She is well known for her communications skills and her ability to bring her knowledge of design and technique to the classroom experience.
Living in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, J. Craig Jett, Benner works in her studio custom-built in the backyard of their family home. They have two grown sons, Kellan and Calder Jett, who were the muses for many of her early series.
Although she has lived in Texas for over 40 years, part of her heart resides still in her home state of Wisconsin.
Statement
My love affair with fabric began with my first memories of the clothes my mother, Joanne Hagene Benner, made me. Uncannily, I can recall the exact hue, fiber content and weave. In the ensuing years, my mother taught me to sew, carefully and creatively.
My father, Milt Benner, always had a pencil in his hand or behind his ear, drawing on napkins in restaurants and painting on the weekends. I now recognize how creativity was imbedded in everything he did. I have kept my maiden name in his artistic honor and memory.
While in college and immersed in the subjects of calculus, organic chemistry and cellular biology, I was continually drawn to the visual. I saw pattern everywhere: math problems danced in a dimensional space, organic molecules were drawn in structural diagrams, and biological cells stacked themselves in lovely arrays. When forced to satisfy a few humanities credits, I took an art history course that changed the direction of my life dramatically. Surface design, drawing, painting and more art classes followed.
My education in molecular biology and biomedical illustration still figures in my work with a deep sense of structure and organizing principles. "Form follows function," and the resulting form is usually beautiful in its solution.
My experiments continue in my studio. I revel in the simple act of placing one fabric next to another. It’s a good way to begin, and the work continues.
Guest room amenities include Towels, soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, hair dryers, in room coffeemaker, mini fridge, tv, internet, lap desks, yoga mats
Light appetizers and refreshments
Includes 4 nights of dinner, lunch and breakfast, daily snack breaks, unlimited coffee, tea & seltzer
If art supplies are included in the price of the retreat, it will show in the description.
Taxis and rental cars available at airport. We may be able to pick you up at the airport or train station with prior arrangements.
See below for fun and inspiring add-on excursions
Your instructor will reach out with details on needed materials and supplies. You can have your supplies shipped directly to us if you do not want to travel with them.
Although we do not require trip insurance, we VERY HIGHLY recommend it. Here is a link for purchasing Trip Insurance where you can compare rates and coverage. https://www.travelinsurance.com/
5pm Welcome Reception - meet your fellow students reception with appetizers and refreshments.
Room check ins begin at 3pm
All-day workshop starting at 9am and lunch
Art Studio available 24/7
Optional yoga, walking, biking in the morning Workshop from 9-4 (breakfast & lunch included)
Art Studio available 24/7
Optional yoga, walking, biking in the morning Workshop from 9 - noon (breakfast included)
Excursion to one of the 169 small towns in Connecticut for touring and lunch and a visit to one of the gardens designed by historic landscape designer, Beatrix Farrand, among the first women to practice landscape architecture in the United States. “A garden, large or small, must be treated in the Impressionist manner,” she once wrote. “Plants are to the gardener what her palette is to the painter.” Farewell Dinner together in Glastonbury
Art Studio available 24/7
Breakfast in the morning Studio work in the morning, sketching and
Checkout by 1PM
I've always loved art I've always liked to create I've always liked the hospitality industry I've always loved the water I've always liked to transform spaces I've always loved gardens and gardening I am a die-hard New Englander So we bought a beautiful historic property in the center of a very historic town, Glastonbury with direct river access... Spent years renovating... Transformed this tired property into a showpiece of Art, design and gardens... Made a home and business reflecting my design style... Have been operatin
