Alegre Retreat 2022 Teachers
Katie Pasquini Masopust is our master of ceremonies and has gone to great lengths to line up a fabulous team of instructors who will offer a rich variety of courses for the 2022 Alegre Retreat.
Jean Wells
Maria Shell
Sheila Frampton-Cooper
Katie Pasquini Masopust
Jean Wells is an author/educator/designer, proprietress of The Stitchin’ Post in Sisters, Oregon, and founder of the annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. She also is an avid gardener. Jean has written more than 28 books about quilting, from Patchworthy Apparel in 1978, to her latest, Journey to Inspired Art Quilting.
As owner of The Stitchin’ Post, which she opened in 1975, Jean has received the Business of the Year and Citizen of the Year award in Sisters, and was the first independent retailer to be inducted into Primedia Independent Retailer Hall of Fame. The Stitchin’ Post was one of the first quilt shops to be included in the American Patchwork and Quilting top ten quilt shop issue. She is the founder of the legendary Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show in 1975 , when just 12 quilts were displayed.
In addition to operating a successful quilt shop and mail order business and overseeing an annual quilt show for more than 33 years, Jean also has designed, appeared on televised quilting shows, and taught business and quilting workshops throughout the United States and abroad. She has received the Michael Kile Award of Excellence for her contribution to the quilting industry, and she received the Imagination Award in the Millennium Quilt Contest in 2000. In July of 2010 she was inducted into the Quilter’s Hall of Fame in Indiana.
When award-winning artist Sheila Frampton Cooper creates, she revels in the spontaneous. Her free-form process with its surprising twists and turns inevitably delivers her to a place of unfiltered originality where her bold work unapologetically commands attention.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Sheila showed a strong-willed, artistic temperament from an early age and has been creating art since her earliest memories. When she was 19 she lived in Italy, France and Belgium, and upon her return, embarked with a vengeance down her creative path. Several years later as a single mom working hard to provide for her two young sons, she painted in the evenings as a creative outlet. One night as she was working, she looked at the painting and thought, “I don’t like this,” so she dipped the brush in paint and started throwing it around in a frenzy. Then something magical happened—there was a whole scene on the canvas that just flowed out. That moment profoundly changed her.
From years of oil, acrylic and watercolor painting to jewelry-making and architectural photography, it has been a surprising leap to her current passion of studio art quilts. Her greatest affinity lies with improvisational piecing, as well as painting with thickened dyes and various aspects of surface design. Whether it’s a butterfly on her windowsill, a bird in her garden or the colors of a tropical fish, Sheila finds inspiration in the natural world as well as the bustling metropolis. This duality manifests itself in her work through bold, graphic designs juxtaposed with more quiet and flowing, amorphous creations.
Sheila is also a passionate teacher and has shared her process in workshops around the world. She says, “Another wonderful change quilting brought into my life was the opportunity to teach. It is a privilege for me to witness what my students accomplish in 2-5 days! I am honored to hold the space and guide them as they discover the freedom, joy, and for some, the discomfort that comes from not knowing the outcome of their creations”.
Since embarking on her fiber art adventure in 2010, Sheila has won awards at major quilt shows, including: IQA World of Beauty in Houston, AQS Show in Paducah and Road to California. Her work has been exhibited in the United States, France, Italy, England, China and Japan.
Sheila has recently returned to Southern California after living in France for more than five years.
Maria Shell’s work is grounded in the tradition and craft of American quilt making. She strives to take the classical components of a traditional bedquilt and manipulate them with the hope of creating surprising combinations of pattern, repetition, and color for the viewer.
Maria is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation 2011 Winter Award, a Rasmuson Foundation Project Award and two Rasmuson Fellowships (2009, 2013, 2017). She has had several solo and small group shows including fiber at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio, Right Lines & Circles at the Ormond Beach Memorial Art Museum and Gardens in Ormond Beach, Florida, Line + Shape at the Hello Stitch Studio in Berkeley, California, and The Pieced Canvas at the Visions Art Museum in San Diego, California. Her most recent solo exhibition is Off the Grid which will be on view at the Shelburne Art Museum in Shelburne, Vermont from May—October 2022. Her first book Improv Patchwork—Dynamic Quilts Made with Line & Shape was published in 2017.
For nearly 30 years Katie Pasquini Masopust has produced high quality contemporary art quilts that have been coveted and collected by a broad range of admirers. From her early beginnings as a painter dabbling in traditional quilt making, her work has evolved from structured Mandalas and mind-blowing dimensional pieces to very painterly landscapes and abstracts executed with the finest fabrics and most creative stitching techniques. Katie’s easy, energetic manner has made her a very popular teacher and lecturer.
When not in residence at her studio in Fortuna, CA she travels the world presenting her contemporary quilting theories and techniques to classes; not only in North America, but in Europe, the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. Awards and accolades have been numerous for Katie, culminating with her 2005 induction into a very select group of art quilt professionals who have earned the Silver Star Award presented by Houston Quilt Festival.
A prolific author, Katie shares her enthusiasm for the art of creative quilting through her numerous books, her many classes, and now as a member of the Experius Academy Advisory Council as they work to develop the art mission for the new Gateway Canyons Resort in Colorado.