Is a picture worth 1000 words?

For anyone who received the 2012 ANG Seminar catalog this week and happened upon page 16, you might have found yourself wondering "What the heck is Orna Willis teaching?!?!?"I am not sure what happened with this layout, but as anyone knows who does graphics, and deals with printers, bad things can happen in the click of a button!

Since this photo is a little, er, cryptic, at best, I thought I would just take a moment to post some illuminating closeups of the class, and explain a little bit more about the project I will be teaching.

My City, My Skyline is a 3-day class that incorporates the idea of a shadowbox with needlepoint. While I normally prefer to work in the abstract, this year I thought I would honor my hometown of Philly, and celebrate it's historical, elegant skyline by a foray into the representational. Each section of the needlepoint skyline will be stitched using beautiful silk and metallic threads. Tiny combination stitches will be worked on Congress cloth. The last part of the class will be used to assemble all of the pieces, using Lucite blocks (You can see those in the ANG photo) of differing widths, Masonite board, and black and white skyline photos. The finished piece has the leveled, shadowed effect of a real city skyline!

Here, My City, My Skyline is used as a wall hanging, accentuating shadows and emphasizing the 3-d nature of the work.

The idea of giving needlepoint depths, height, and dimensionality, has always fascinated me and I am thrilled that My City, My Skyline will be included in the 40th year line up of the ANG seminar.

So if you hear anyone flipping through the catalog, wondering what on earth I'm up to, send them here, and I'll straighten it out!

(PS - OK, I'm going to muster up the courage and ask a favor... do you mind, please, forwarding this to anyone you know who might be going to Seminar this year?  I would really appreciate it!  xoxo O)