The 14th annual Society of American Mosaic Artists's conference was held in Houston, Texas, April 30-May 4. It was a great five days of networking, education and creative inspiration. This year I was able to simply be a participant, in contrast to last year when I was the co-lead artist on the Mosaic Marathon in Tacoma. It is a good experience to do that job once, but I was happy to be able to take a couple of workshops this year and just drop in for a two-hour session of the marathon, not be responsible for completing it! This year, Dianne Sonnenberg of Austin was more than up to the task. She and her Austin Mosaic Guild group created a very ambitious tryptich, that was not only big, it was sculptural and very involved. We were concerned they would not finish in time, but indeed they did! On Sunday I went on the bus that took a group of us to the installation site at Smither Park and watched the installation on the community-built, ongoing project that is the memory wall. Here is a photo recap of some of my experiences at the conference. Warning: 20 photos to follow. I won't be insulted if you don't look at them all! :-)
