Workshop & Instructor Information

Lura Schwarz Smith

Art Images to Fabric

March 22 - 28, 2009

All Levels

Working with images of your choice, produce a small art quilt top from your own photographs or drawings while learning to draft distorted traditional blocks, and construct textures with a free-form paperless curved piecing technique. Experience various paints, inks, materials and ways to play with imagery. Design and composition exercises are explored, as well as the opportunity for in-depth shading and drawing assistance in rendering images on fabric. Emphasis is on individual applications of techniques, and the fun of developing your own style.

"As an artist, I am interested in merging my art background with quilting techniques and to explore those potentials, in the effort to express the inner life through fabric art. As a teacher, my interest is to share those techniques, and more importantly, to encourage students to validate their own art nature, and find their own unique expression of art in their quilt work, no matter what style they choose."

Lura Schwarz Smith, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art from San Francisco State University, has been producing art quilts for 30 years. Before that, she was making very bad traditional bed quilts with her first quilting buddy, her mother, starting in the 1960s. Originally showing in galleries in the 70s and 80s, for the past years she has been showing quilts and receiving awards at regional, national, and international quilt shows. Several highlights of her career in the quilt world over the past decade are that one of her quilts was named one of the "100 Best American Quilts of the 20th Century," and she was included in the "30 Distinguished Quilt Artists of the World" exhibit at the first Tokyo Dome quilt show in 2002. She is a member of various art quilt groups such as Studio Art Quilt Associates and the California Fiber Artists. Currently, like many artists and quilters, she is working on redoing her juggling act of family, teaching and travel, to manage more time in the studio. For more information, visit www.lura-art.com and www.thedigitalquilt.com

Other published work may be seen in:

AMERICAN QUILTER MAGAZINE, Summer 07, pp. 68-71

AMERICAN QUILTER MAGAZINE, Summer 06, cover story, pp. 38-42 AMERICAN STYLE MAGAZINE #41, Feb 05, pp. 18-20

"A CENTURY OF QUILTS: AMERICA IN CLOTH", PBS video, 2001 QUILTS: CROSSING BOUNDARIES, by Primedia, 2000

100 BEST AMERICAN QUILTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY, by Primedia, 1999 GREAT AMERICAN QUILTS 2000, by Oxmoor House

IMAGERY ON FABRIC, by Jean Ray Laury, 1997, 1992

FACES AND PLACES, by Charlotte Warr Andersen, 1995 CONTEMPORARY PICTORIAL QUILTS, by Wendy Lavitt

QUIL TERS NEWSLETIER MAGAZINE, Feb.03, Oct.02, Nov.98, June 96, etc.