My casket journey officially began in early May 2013 with this sketch.
5 years later I had the extraordinary experience of exhibiting the finished casket at Winterthur Museum .
All of this happened because of the two women with me in the photo above and a few years of stitching. In the middle is Linda Eaton, Director of Collections and Senior Curator of Textiles at Winterthur Museum. She was looking for a contemporary piece of embroidery to include in her newest show at Winterthur, "Embroidery: The Thread of History." On the right is Tricia Nguyen of Thistle Threads and the mastermind behind the casket renaissance.
Tricia shared my work with Linda, Linda asked if I would be willing to ship my box to the museum for a few months and I said yes. I think we make a great team!
Here I am meeting Linda for the first time and finally seeing my casket on display. Didn't the museum do a beautiful job!?
Friends from Indiana came to see the show! How sweet was that?
There was an embroidery conference held in conjunction with the show. The night before several "Casketeers" from Tricia's classes met for dinner. I took my second casket along for show and tell. Even the wait staff stopped to look.
On the Friday night of the conference there was a reception and I got the chance meet attendees in the gallery and talk about my work. They even let me bring the second casket into the gallery just for that evening. This is where today's blog title comes in.
This is an evening I am not likely to forget, ever.
One of the very best parts was finally meeting so many of you, my blog readers. Thank you for taking the time to introduce yourselves! I truly had no idea there were so many, so interested. So today I will start again with chronicling the ups and downs of casket 3. Casket 3!? Who knows where this journey will lead next.
Another sketch from that first blog post. This Winterthur experience was certainly a 'ta da' moment.
Outside the museum resting and soaking up the rays. It is very hard work having so much fun.
