Katie Pasquini Masopust: Are You Ready For Her?
Quilting Arts Magazine called Katie Pasquini Masopust The Rock Star of Quilting, and if I listed all the quilting related awards she has won, positions she has held, books she has written and workshops she has taught, you would have to concede that she earned that status.
Katie PM
I am more interested in convincing you to take a workshop from this woman. Whether you go sniffing on the Internet like a hungry dog (we do love to dig up those tasty bones of information) or simply trip over an opportunity to register for a class with Katie, don’t pass it by. Why? Cast your gaze over these beauties in her gallery, and assure me~with a straight face~that you do not harbor any curiosity as to how she “came up with” those designs.
Katie’s strong suit is design. She has collected many ways to instigate design ideas, such as blind contour drawing with musical accompaniment, or painting nothing but the shadows of a still life. These and other approaches can be found within design textbooks, and Katie makes no pretense of having invented the exercises. What she adds, with great flair and much laughter, is her own presence to the mix. Katie is loud, confident and FUN. She manages to transform a class of seemingly normal, polite students into something akin to sports spectators. At her lecture tonight, all of us (in her Quilting By the Lake class) occupied the very front row of the auditorium to hoot and holler our boisterous appreciation for our teacher’s every word and projected image.
This is after only three days in her classroom. Obviously, Katie has a personality with a capital P. She convinces every student that they are important to her, their designs have great potential, and they are part of her very best class, ever.
Part of Katie’s design genius is her flair for cropping. She demonstrates how, if a design is lacking verve, one can isolate a section within it that exudes pizzazz. If this method fails, she slices the painting or drawing into smaller pieces and shuffles them into as many configurations as it takes to produce a winner. I am certain that our five days together will not begin to empty her magical bag of transformations.
What I appreciate most about Katie PM, however, is the way she keeps re-inventing herself. She masters a technique, writes a book about it, teaches it and moves on. Something else catches her fancy, and she is, in her words, “done with” what came before. All these metamorphoses are accompanied by ongoing art lessons, which feed and nurture her constant quest to expand her artistic knowledge and experience.
Following someone’s lesson plan, or trying to emulate the steps they use from a book or video cannot compete with being in the presence of a living, breathing teacher who knows how to act as a catalyst for ideas. And ideas increase exponentially in a group of motivated individuals who have come together with the intent of being inspired and offering their own inspiration to others.
It takes a certain openness. Are you ready?
Grazioso ~ 64" x 64" ~ by Katie Pasquini Masopust (used with permission)
Passages: Chaco Canyon ~ 45"x 65" ~ by Katie Pasquini Masopust (used with permission)
#design #cropping #QuiltingByTheLake #openness #KatiePasquiniMasopust #reinventing #repositioning #blindcontourdrawing
