Next in this series featuring our friendly neighbors from Surtex, we have two textile designers from our respective states of residence: Laurie Wisbrun, not only a neighbor from Surtex but a fellow resident of our beloved Austin, TX, and Ketra Oberlander from the Art of Possibility Studios in California.
We had actually just seen Laurie’s recent work featured on True Up, one of our favorite fabric-design web sources, so it seemed like a triple coincidence when we found out that she was both from Austin and happened to be in a booth next to ours at the show. Laurie was helped by her cousin (shown here on the right) and her sister, and the three were having a great time both at the show and exploring the city.
Laurie is new to the design scene, having recently finished a career as a marketing executive for an advertising agency in New York. She began exposing her patterns to the public through Spoonflower and her etsy site – the perfect model of the home-grown start-up design business. Now she has a collection out with Robert Kaufman Fabrics, and we are looking forward to seeing a lot of new work in the future.
Next, to our right, we met Ketra, founder and director of The Art of Possibility, an agency which represents physically-disabled artists and which has recently put out a quilting fabric collection with Free Spirit called, Wise Tree. Ketra also mentioned that she might have sold as many Apple iPads during the show as art, and here, you can see my dad – a.k.a. contract man, chief I.T. guy, and bouncer-offer of new ideas for Cathy Heck Studio, being shown one of many very cool apps on the product (which Ketra was also able to use to present the company’s portfolio to clients).
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5 Comments
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Hellloooo Cathy and Ellen! What a delightful surprise and a treat to have some marvelous neighbors at Surtex. I had such 1st timer jitters and it was so nice to walk into the Javitz and head to my booth to find your smiling and friendly faces across the aisle! I’m so glad to have gotten to meet you you both. Talented and delightfully nice. What a great combination! And we’ll have get togeter for a mexican food meal soon. Ellen – you’ll just have to come to town!!! :)
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If you were next to Ketra, then I know you had fun! Sorry to have missed you guys! Hi Jimmy!
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Thank you for writing new friends! Hope you had a great show.
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New sites to see! :-)
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The Noah animal crackers idea was darling. Congratulations on having a good show at Surtex.
MMC
