Fiber Art: Following the Thread, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
 

 

Fiber Art :
Following the Thread
Created on
July 5, 2002
Cynthia Schira (born 1934)
Interview conducted by Margo Mensing in Westport, New York, July 2001.
This interview was funded by Nanette L. Laitman as part of the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Art in America.

MS. SCHIRA: That came, actually, later in my life, the last, oh, 15, 20 years. I think- I've taught there. I taught there about four times. I started in 1976 teaching a session. Haystack is a summer school. It's now in its 50th year. And it exists in Deer Isle, Maine. And they're short sessions, two three-week sessions, a couple of one-week sessions. It's a wonderful, wonderful place; I have to say that, because there's a chance to connect with people in your media and other people in other media. And it's small enough that there is a real interaction among everybody.

Then because of the teaching, then I came onto the board, and I was on the board for nine years and I was chair for three years of the board. And the connections that I had made there, with the people and with ideas and with media and with the landscape, were incredibly important to me.

The lovely part about Haystack and some of these summer programs is that you have people that really want to be there and they're really, really interested, and they're perfectly willing to work 24 hours a day. So that you have an intensity that you don't have in a university much of the time.
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