SDA Day One & Two

the view from our hotel room looking south toward Country Club Plaza

On Thursday there were concurrent sessions, a featured speaker, the Keynote address; and the vendor fair opened.

In the evening we had dinner under the big tent on the lawn. It had been cloudy all morning, the sun came out but the temperature stayed nice and cool. There was no meeting agenda, it was open seating, and the wine was free. We sat with old friends and met new people. It was a great set up for the vendors fair. The vendors fair is in the 2nd floor conference rooms across the hall from the grand ballroom. The featured speakers, member meeting and trunk show are in the grand ballroom. This has been a great set up. It is like the village market place with people going from booth to booth, oohing and ahhing over the beautiful textiles and other things. At one point, Smadar found me in line for the dessert crepes and pulled me out to look at a piece of shibori that had just come from Japan. We ended up buying the whole nine yard piece together.

Chetna, holding a piece of shibori she bought, and Smadar

Crossroads Arts District

Interior of the phenominal Lidia's

Friday was gallery day in the Crossroads art district. Six of us from California headed down there after the membership meeting. We had lunch at the phenomenal Lidia’s, and went gallery crawling. There are four galleries with SDA related exhibitions on the street leading away from Lidia’s. at Leedy Voulkos Art Center we ran into and met Jerry Bleem, one of my favorite artists. I first saw his work at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art gallery on that same street, at another conference.

Jerry Bleem's work

At the membership meeting on Friday Morning we learned for sure that the conference won't be in Kansas City next time. The folks at KCAI have done a wonderful job hosting it five times in the last 10 years. They're tired, its time for a change. We found out the conference will be in Minneapolis in 2011. They're excited, and it sounds like it will be a great setting.

So I've decided part of my puropse here is to document some of my favorite things about how great Kansas City was for the SDA conference.

Cafe Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum