The Mendocino Art Center is an educational, exhibition, and resource center for the visual and performing arts, located 150 miles north of San Francisco in the quiet coastal village of Mendocino.. The Art Center's world-wide reputation attracts a prestigious visiting faculty, yet remains small enough for individual attention and productive dialog between emerging and professional artists. For more information and to order a workshop catalog, please visit the Mendocino Arts Center website: www.mendocinoartcenter.org.

We'll spend the first 3 days of this workshop painting with dyes on silk to create our own fabric to machine quilt during the last 2 days. We will use a variety of silk painting techniques, mixing our colors from primaries and using the gutta serti method, all with non-toxic dyes and resists. You can work in any image style that's comfortable for you: painterly representation, abstraction or geometric pattern. We will explore the elements of color, line, texture, space and movement. In the second half of the workshop we will explore how machine quilting can enhance your painted silk, using quilting lines to create additional design elements, texture, and pattern. We will work in a smaller format so that you will have the opportunity to complete a piece during the workshop and take home partially completed pieces and inspiration for further exploration. There will be slide presentations, demonstrations and individual consultations. Students should have some experience in drawing and machine quilting; silk painting experience can range from none to advanced.

Cost: $325.00 plus housing, meals and materials fee ($35.00).

Click here to register for the workshop (scroll down until you see workshop #SU07T714).

Linda Gass exhibits her quilted paintings on silk internationally in galleries and museums. Her work has appeared in several books and magazines including the cover of Fiberarts, American Style, Surface Design, Art Quilts: A Celebration and Fiberarts Design Book 7. Her quilt After the Gold Rush won the Quilt National Rookie Award. She recently appeared in two episodes of Simply Quilts on Home & Garden Television and has taught at Arrowmont and lectured at Stanford University. Linda's love of color and texture plays a key role in her art informed by her activist passions; her work focuses on water issues in the American West. She travels extensively in the wilderness areas of the West where she finds much of the inspiration for her work.