My friend Susan Hensel (Sue H.), moved to Minneapolis a year or two ago. I have known her since her days in Okemos, Michigan as part of a team of three women at an art center/gallery called Wyrd Sisters (I taught polymer clay for them, this was maybe 1990 or 1991).

I lost track of Sue H. for a while after Wyrd Sisters closed. However, I found my friend Susan Swartz at a polymer workshop in Chicago (we had first met online) and she encouraged me to try eraser carving (soft print block making, often paired with mail art activities) and the online group called the Carving Consortium (CC). I joined the CC and learned a lot. I didn’t know that Sue H. was also pursuing eraser carving in a big way, in East Lansing, only maybe 15 minutes away.

Somewhere in there, I got into a book on non-jewelry polymer clay art (Polymer Clay, by Jacqueline Gikow) with one sculpture and several Hershberger Art Kazoos. Later yet, I got into Luann Udell’s book on eraser carving (the first mainstream book written on the subject).

Well, the printmaking got me a bit interested in the possibility of making books. I figured I’d make covers of polymer and pages printed with my own images. I might even stamp the polymer before baking, as well.

This happened just about when I started to get a little bored with making polymer clay art. Nevermind that I can tell you a book full of reasons why it’s the best medium for any artist and how you can do so much you’ll never get bored. I just needed to branch out a bit.

So I took a class from Susan Hensel, on how to make a simple type of book. And when we started sewing the spine, my gut had a physical reaction. I knew I must start pulling threads again! I had done a lot of sewing and some embroidery during my first marriage, but somehow I threw out the baby with the bathwater and stopped cold turkey. With the bookmaking class, I learned that my next step was not bookmaking at all, but fiber.

So Sue put me in touch with Nancy McRay who was at that time teaching weaving at a community ed program in East Lansing. I took a short class on weaving with Nancy, and she told me about a 3-D feltmaking workshop by Joan Livingstone, coming right up. I had always loved wool, so this sounded quite fascinating.

I ended up going to that workshop. I loved it! I made a large vessel, like a purse shape, and then I covered a pink plastic yard flamingo with gray wool, his own little sweater! I was hooked.

So I went home and surfed the Internet on Wool. And I somehow found myself at socknitters.com. And I knew that moment, that my life would change! And it did.

I was working on a computer project for a client at the time, and I knew better than to go to the yarn shop until the project was done. When I had tucked in that project, I went to Yarn for Ewe. Ruth helped me find a pattern, yarn and needles (I had never knit in a circle before, never used DPNs, never did a project needing purl stitches or decreases). I went home and in 10 days I had a pair of socks that fit! And that was just over 4 years and 119 pair of socks ago. And I’ve never looked back.

So why do I tell this? Well, when I discovered feltmaking I had an idea for the Fabric of Friendship project. I told Sue Hensel. She thought it a great idea. At that point she was in a new partnership with Nancy McRay (now of Woven Art yarn shop/gallery) and Leslie Donaldson (now of Scene Metrospace in East Lansing). They had a space called Art Apartment. They encouraged me to follow through with that idea, and I did the show.

So now Sue is out of state. I do call her from time to time (there is nothing like the support of another self-employed woman). She has a new space in Minneapolis (I was born in Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis). I told her I wanted to do another big project. A sculptural/artpiece knitting and crochet exhibit. With wall hangings and sculptures made at least primarily with knitting or crocheting. Yarn is assumed but absolutely not required.

We expect to show the accepted works in July/August of 2006. The call for work will go out in September, so that artists will have time to create works that do not currently exist in any form.

If you wish to be notified of the call for work on this show, either send me an email at Lynn AT ColorJoy DOT com, or sign up for Susan Hensel’s yahoo list. Sue’s list is called:

SusanHenselDesign

You can go to http://groups.yahoo.com to access it.