talking, speaking, words

I spoke to a wonderful group of folks last Friday as part of an event at the Atwood House Museum in Massachusetts. It was a wonderful day and event. There were 3 speakers one who spoke of an obsessive and incredible recreation of a historical embroidery piece. It was nutty but totally awesome to hear about the dedication of all these people to accurately recreate the piece. Me talking about me and all the awesome art being made with a needle. And finally a conservator talking about how to properly store, display and hang textiles. As an artist I will not be displaying as she suggested but I did learn a lot of good stuff about how to best store my work and learned I was not doing a terrible job.

But to my talk, I felt really good abut mine and generally I do really love public speaking.  The audience was just a delight. They were so warm and appreciative after the talk. One even gave me a hug of appreciation. Quite a few talked about how inspiring it was to see how artists were using embroidery and found textiles.

Then as I was leaving and walking out to my car a women at her car spoke out to me and said she so enjoyed my talk. She then told me that she had an "aha" moment.

Of course I inquired as to what it was. She proceeded to tell me how she had a moment as I was talking about the act of catharcism and how one often makes work as a cathartic act and how confessional and autobiographical art often has this element. She then explained that her daughter had made art about something that had happened to her and she never understood why and now she did. I was so grateful that she shared this with me and so grateful that I could open the eyes of a mother to her daughter's healing practice- it really made my day!  As an artist that has often made her mother uncomfortable  with my art but who has also always had a mom that supported this- it was a really wonderful experience.

I was so happy to be a part of this event and the nice long walk on the beautiful cape cod beach I took afterwards was not to  bad either.