End of the Show

We're taking down my TAC show tonight. It was fun and successful, and I love the idea of six of my paintings going on to have lives of their own. I hope the people who bought them enjoy them for many years to come. The painting to the right is one of my favorites, and one of two of the small ones that didn't sell. I realize it is a challenging color to visualize in a room of one's home, but it sure was a fun color to paint with.

Today I am preparing paper for some new sepia and silverpoint drawings.

drawing

Yesterday some new art supplies came in the mail, there is nothing like that, fresh unused drawing stuff. This is part of my plan to upgrade the materials I use for my continual drawings, rather than have heaps and stacks of receipts and classroom roll sheets with sharpie drawings on the back. So, the first step is to get fresh paper into my sketchbook. I don't like bound sketchbooks, because they are often too thick and heavy to carry around all day, and I like to be able to discard pages I don't like, or have a variety of papers with me.

The new materials I'm using are natural sanguine and silverpoint. I played with the silverpoint last night, and I think I will like it. It gives such a delicate line, so very different than a woodcut line. I've always wanted to try silverpoint, but had simply not ever seen one for sale. The site I link for both items is where I purchased them.

It is pouring rain, so a good weekend for making art (no garden-care guilt)

planning new work

Now that my show at TAC is almost over, I'm torn between spring cleaning and starting some new work or finishing paintings I've already started. I'm really wanting to draw, not sketch, not preparatory work, but draw. So I find myself gathering those materials around me, bringing them out of boxes, finding the sanguine and bistre, thinking about paper while doing laundry (cold press Fabriano is where I am right now, but Arches 88 is always around just because I like it).

While gallery sitting Friday I did these in my sketchbook, one on a dark brown canson that I covered with Rembrandt white (a pastel, not the toothpaste!), and the other with white pastel and sanguine conte on a bright yellow paper. The holes are what I punch into my sketchbook paper.

ArtBiz

We are winding up an excellent online "promote your art" class with Alyson Stanfield. It was very helpful and I'm looking forward to using the things we learned.

Also, I might be having one of my paintings published on the front of a phone book. It isn't for sure yet, and it isn't the work that I exhibit generally. This is a rather personal painting, sentimental, not for sale, all that. Just an idea that I had that is meaningful to me. It is called The Road to Galveston.

Gallery sitting

I sat at TAC today, and left the door open so the fresh air could come in and blow drifts of little white Bradford Pear petals all over the floor. There were already plenty there, so I figured it was an ok thing to do. This has been a great year for redbuds and pears and sand plums, all of which are blooming right now.

Ray Gloeckler had sent the gallery a postcard to congratulate me on my show, and as usual it had lovely Wisconsin cows on the front.

Instead of closing for lunch, most of the people I saw today came in on their lunch breaks. Most of them were artists, and it was fun visiting with them.

Campus Visit

Today another teacher and I took a former student to visit Oklahoma City University. I graduated there in 1983, and although I have fond memories of my time there, I seldom have reason to go back. It was a real walk down memory lane in some ways, but what really struck me was the quality and scale of the improvements the school has made. But this wasn't about me, after all. I was very impressed by the personalized attention they gave our prospective student, particularly Coach Reynolds who took a moment from his day to come out and shake her hand and mention her high school coach by name, and gave her more information about what she should do to prepare (she's just a junior) those things really made an impression on us all. We decided later that he seemed genuinely excited about starting a women's wrestling program - he didn't sound like somebody who was being pressured into it by the administration. In short, he made us think he would take good care of our girl.

The students who spoke to us and gave the tour were very professional, friendly, and were great examples of what a close community the school is. The improvements to the physical plant were overwhelming, good grief, the Meinders School of Business building was incredible (and it is shaped like an "M").

So, after the tour we went back to "Alvin's cafe" for some coffee, Tif bought the Coach a thank you card, and we headed home.

Spring Break

Today is the first day of Spring Break. I sent the final balance to Adrienne Day to pay for our portfolio boxes for "Oklahoma Print Portfolio II". This is a project she has organized with printmakers across the state. It is going to be exciting to see what everybody made. I did a woodcut with chine colle called Tivoli. Although it obviously took its own direction, the initial sketches were in reference to a bunch of pink cabbage roses that I saw hanging over a garden wall in, well, Tivoi. I also photographed the roses. You can see how very different the two images are. That's how art works sometimes.

trying a photo

I am going to add my first photo to the blog. This picture is a pinhole photograph, which means it was taken without a lens, light simply passes through a tiny hole drilled in a piece of metal directly onto the film. I will eventually have a pinhole photograph page on my website, but this will do for now.

It was taken at the rooftop cafe at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence this past summer.

The camera was an Agfa Clack I altered to become a pinhole. I found the instructions on Robert Kosara's site, and they work!

A Nice Suprise

It was a nice suprise to be standing in a checkout line yesterday and be suprised by noticing my own paintings on the front page of the local paper. Molly did a great job on the article. Thank you so much.

Kent was pretty suprised to find himself listed as a local artist.