Portland Parlor Meeting Notes

SAQA, Portland Parlor Meeting, Jan. 16, 2013

Our meeting began with meeting SAQA members new to our group, Marion Shimoda, Sherri Culver, Para Winingham, and Bonnie Bucknam's friend, Pat Sims from Alaska. Welcome to Sherrie, Para and Marion and we hope you will join us for future meetings. Twenty-three members attended the meeting.

Our focus for the meeting, using Alyson Stanfield's "Year-End Review" as our guide, each person spoke their accomplishments of 2012 and their goals and focus for 2013. It was wonderful to hear about the accomplishments and passions of each person. Members were juried into more shows, new techniques and media were explored, articles written for quilt journals and several members were feeling a stronger voice in their fiber art. Moving forward, members were going to take more classes, some less, and several wanted to continue their charity efforts, in Guatemala, Coffee Creek and Women for Veterans. In general, focus and moving forward were clear choices for the 2013.

From our discussion we aimed to move forward with the agenda for our future meetings. The group wants to continue critiques at the  monthly meetings. We will plan our meetings with the first hour for special topics and the second hour for critiquing, limiting it to five critiques per meeting. We would continue to sign up for critiquing. Our February 20th meeting at Elizabeth Bamberger's home, we will begin covering selected topics for each meeting, with a member facilitating the discussion. Elizabeth volunteered for the first discussion; sewing machines, threads and needles. She will be our point person for the meeting.  Please send questions on this topic to Elizabeth so she can organize the discussion. Future meetings will continue in this format with topics to be decided each month for the next meeting.

Bonnie reminded the group that Oregon SAQA activities can be found on the blog that she has organized for us on www.saqaoregon.blogspot.com. Gerrie Congdon reminded us as well, the group has a yahoo site, which is another way for the members to communicate. If you are not signed up for the yahoo group, contact Gerrie for an invitation.

Several announcements were made at the meeting.They are as follows.

The Oregon Region has been accepted for an exhibit and conference at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg in 2014. The exhibit will be on display from mid-February-March 31. The one day conference will be  held the second week of March. The theme of the show will be "Exploring Layers." A prospectus will be out in a few weeks for the parameters of entering the juried show.

Diane Born announced a show of five SAQA artists, titled "What Comes Next" that will be on display at the Portland Heritage Center (SE Grand & Alder) from February 1-28. A second Show will follow, March 1-31, called "A Different Look." Anyone interested in doing a future show at the Portland Heritage Center should contact Barbara Pierce.

Jean and my terms as co-representatives for the Oregon Region will be finished this fall. We are looking for replacements. We have agreed to stay through the organization of the conference and will help the new Oregon co-reps transition through the conference in March. Contact either of us if you are interested.

Pardon the length of the notes from the January meeting. Again there was great enthusiasm in the meeting and for our future meetings. We will continue to have our Portland meetings on the third Wednesday of each month, 10am-12noon, rotating between Gerrie's and Elizabeth's homes. A meeting “expense kitty" was started this month. Thanks to those who contributed and it will be continued.

Betty Daggett
Oregon Region Co-representative
Bdavisdaggett@gmail.com