Closing at the Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota is this Surface Design Association show.  The Surface Design Association promotes textile arts in the arts and design communities.  They have conferences, shows, and a journal — the Spring 2003 issue was on beaded surfaces, and it is gorgeous.

This show was works submitted to the 2007 conference, and the sole requirement was its size, 52″x18″.  There are 100 works on display, and the variety of styles, techniques, images, designs, etc., are inspiring.  Sorry, pictures weren’t allowed, but I’ll describe a few of my favorites, with links as I find them..

Barbara O’Steen made a collage of a city scene using labels from clothing, both the word side, and the carried thread side.

Naoko Kamimura did a beautiful, peaceful scene of the moon and landscape using gold and silver leaf on silk organza.

Jennifer Beaven had a clear vinyl panel with pockets, with essentially artist trading cards in each pocket.  This would be an excellent room divider in an art room!

Carol Krueger uses digitized machine embroidery to make amazing faces.

Leslie C. Carabas had the most interesting machine stitching.  The piece I saw is on her website, in the 2007 Gallery — Rainbow Tower.  Excellent variety of fabric choices too.

Astrid Hilger Bennett had colors that really appealed to me, good contrasts, nice variety of values.

Caren Engen had a pierced felted panel that I liked.

Marty Jones made a two-sided realistic mosaic with a woman on each side, composed of 3/16″ squares of fabric with some sort of adhesive.  It was stunning both up close and from afar, and contained 29, 952 squares.

Lesley Richmond placed first with a piece called “Tree lace,” which used copper patina, among other techniques.  Very subtle, very beautiful.

About halfway through the show, it registered how many different techniques I was seeing, so I went back to the beginning and wrote them down.  Following is a list of (almost?) all of the techniques used, in no particular order: soy wax resist, kumihimo, western cord twisting, dyed, Chinese knots, woven, rusted, inkjet printed, free motion embroidery, painted, hand/machine quilted, jacquard woven, overdyed, shrunk, discharged, raveled, steamed, layered collaged, hand/machine embroidered, resist dyed, screen embroidered, screenprinted, copper patina, heat reactive base devore, punch outs, burned, batik dyed, fabric pens, knitted, laminated, appliqued, pieced, manipulated, gelatin printed, peau de soie, pigmented starch paste, ink paint, colored pencil, screened, heat-set fiber, torn paper resist printed, Thermofax screen printed, nuno felted, shaped, hand hooked, itajimi shibori dyed, scoured, stamped, photocopied, stenciled, wax-resisted, beaded, digitized machine embroidery, composted, shibori dyed, monoprinted, stitch-resist shibori dyed, immersion dyed, dye painted, airbrushed, transferred, wrapped, fused, differential shrinkage, machine felted, nail rusted, punctured, glue process, glue transfer, Nassen-rice paste resist printed, hand smocked, pierced, encaustic dipped, shredded, resist fulling, trapunto, watercolors, needle felted, pojagi stitched, gold and silver leafed, and indigo dyed.

It was pretty amazing!