Minutes taken by Lydia Sept. 17 2022
Present in person at Fairground: Mary K, Brett, Rond,a Present on Zoom: Michaela, Judy, Maureen, Barbara, Lydia
Started at 9:30 ended at 11:00 am
Treasurer report from Brett: We have $1,197 after having given the check to Mary C for Nancy Prinz workshop. Some discussion about the minimum of ten people committing to this… Maureen agreed to be the tenth person since the workshop will be Oct. 22/23 instead of September(as originally thought). So we appear “good to go” for this.
Dues to remain at $20 for the coming year.
The group voted to continue LAQ buying one Zoom license which will renew in Nov. and cost $150 per year. Michaela is in charge of that.
Discussion started with what LAQ might look like going forward. Brett gave history of how it started with Mary C’s inspiration and Brett and Dolly joining that early. We all agreed so very thankful for Mary’s vision and energy all these years, but also acknowledging she is tired and ready to move on. We talked about how to go ahead, and realizing that it may be smaller group. There are only about 18 paying members right now, and only about 9-10 folks who attend meetings. We discussed 501 C 3 status. Lydia who has started them before explained what that means and the work that is involved. The group decided we are too small and don’t need grants right now, so we do not want to go after that status. BUT we want to keep the records that Mary C has amassed, so how to keep those records? Ideas included Drop Box, Scan and digitize, , Barbara would keep the physical box of files if that is necessary. So for now, we will not go for this status but remain open in the future.
10am : moved to a discussion of Leadership. The group would like to have a Steering Committee and that would be (at least) Mary K. Barbara, Micaela, Brett, Ronda. Lydia felt there should be a Head Cat Herder, and Barbara volunteered for that role (to keep us on track and organized,) so she is the HCH. Treasurer to remain Brett with additional signatories of Mary K and Michaela. Other heads: Education (local) Michaela, Logistics (snax/venue to meet) Ronda, Hospice Mary C or Kathleen (neither was here), Minutes take (Kathleen to continue), Blog ,maintenance: (Ashley likely to be very busy so Barbara, Mary K., Michaela). Speakers from outside ?( Michaela suggested we take this “one at a time” based on if someone in particular has a connection and wants to be in charge of invitation). We thought that October in general seems like a good month to invite some external speaker if we’re going to do it.
Dye Daze: Whole Group expressed great thanks and appreciation to Dolly for hosting so long!! And acknowledged her work for this, and amazement at Dolly’s ability to do flying trapeze tricks while scaling the high ladder. Lydia explained there is a whole change in leadership at the College of Ed, but she will pursue to ask if we could use the Art Ed space downstairs in McWhinnie as we have in the past. That would be a good studio to set up and work in over several days, in the summer when it is not being used for UW classes. End of July or early August is best for that. As for Storage, Lydia and Ronda will work out between themsleves about storing the rubber totes. We agreed that freezing really doesn’t matter for powered goods. We discussed perhaps doing mini-demos’workshops during the dye daze, so that a few new techniques could be learned/shared, but nothing too formal.
Public Sharing/Exhibition: Barbara started us off on this.. said it would be good to help motivate/ inspire us, and show the public what we do and maybe thereby encourage others to join us. She suggested LAQ doing Instagram. Also discussed is the new gallery on Second St. which would be a good exhibition space for us, also the Women’s History museum. Also Art Walk popup. There are Laramie artist groups where we could find out more information about this sort of thing: like Laramie Artists Salon, Mainstreet Alliance, etc. We agreed that exhibiting would give us a boost, a goal, and maybe a good place to put our “challenges” together as a group.
Challenges: Michaela, Barbara, Mary K especially enthusiastic about this… we thought maybe three times a year best instead of doing it every month. Also, comparing the challenges might be a centerpiece of a monthly meeting. We agreed that working six months ahead at the very most is plenty of time for planning what might happen at meetings. Someone felt that we are feeling pretty good about knowing techniques at this point, so maybe we don’t have to put as much emphasis on demos at the meetings next year. Barbara suggested maybe we could build in some field trips to our schedule in the future. Lydia, Judy and Maureen were the only ones to go down to the Lincoln Center Quilt exhibit in Ft. Collins.. It was Amazing! We ate at Avagadro’s beforehand, and went to see the CSU Fabric Arts gallery on campus afterwards. All free.
Website provided by Lydia: https://www.chhs.colostate.
Also, we decided that we will put off planning for 2023 until next meeting (October 15) which will be at the Fairgrounds at 9/9:30am. At that time will have a couple of short technique demos as well.
Not enough time left today for Show and Tell so we will put it off til next meeting and show Dye Daze pieces. Lydia said she lost a lot of color from the pulled prints, and we all decided the pieces had been allowed to dry out before being wrapped up to batch in a damp way. Also, the type of plastic used to wrap matters, and a thin mil is better than thicker plastic which can allow trapped air.
