Linda Rees -- 'I knew my weekend was a success as I was unwinding on the six hour train ride home. The golden stubble and cocoa brown and gray newly plowed flat fields looked beautiful. The flatness and minimal detail was what I needed after a jam packed, visually stimulating weekend.

I was very impressed with the presentations. First because all the speakers were so effortlessly professional and yet not stuffy. Even the panel moved along the way you want one to. No one dominated and lots of thoughtful ideas were expressed. Of course what I liked best was seeing many, many images of contemporary work. Sharon Marcus had an informative talk about maybe 15 weavers, some work hot off the press as the new pieces of Jon Riis which we will see in FIBERARTS and older ones like those of Ann Newdigate, a beautiful curved piece by Jane Kidd and many more. Mary Lane gave a wonderful talk about Susan Mafeii's work highlighting her exploration of creating imagery that takes most advantage of weaving warp ways rather than rotated the image. I really loved being directed to see her small portraits from that perspective.

The ATB4 exhibit was very well lit and seemed to enhance every piece. I know I was incredibly rushed and overloaded in Vancouver when I saw the show so came away with few impressions of details. It was great to have the time to discover aspects of the weavings leisurely as we ate and visited.

I wish more people had brought slides of their work. But we did find out that weaving on a boat had not hindered Linda Wallace from creating beautiful and sophisticated tapestries. Putting faces to list folks was fun. Much of the weekend was spent putting faces to people whose works we had seen over the years. For me it was Tricia Goldberg, who shared a room with me and was delightful. Also Elinor Steele whose geometric work was in some early ATA shows and who is still making spectacular geometric and abstracted landscapes. I even met someone who went to the rival high school from the one I attended -- way later than me.