And now

This is what my studio looks like now. The shop sink is being plumbed, and the new windows come tomorrow. In a few days the wall to the left will have a new door added, so in a way I am gradually losing wall space, but the light is going to be great. There are so many things to plan and organize. I think I will paint it white or a very very light yellow, with a blue-violet ceiling. I paint with those colors a lot, and think I would be happy and productive surrounded by that combination.

New Studio

This morning "Promote your art" classmate Jerry Cable wrote about the wonder of suddenly and unexpectedly finding the studio of his dreams. Our stories are very different, but I am also finding my studio. It is the room that was once the childhood bedroom I shared with my sister who now lives in Ohio. Here is a picture of my studio in those early days. The windows (there are four) look out onto the backyard and garden, and beyond there is a small pasture with horses. A few years ago a robin built a nest on the ledge of the window in the right of the photo, and my elderly mother and I got to watch the whole process up to the baby birds flying away.

Yes, that is a real fox stole around my sister's neck. I don't remember where it came from, but it definitely was a hand me down - and those are silk honeysuckle on my hat (loved that hat). The teapot played "you take the high road" when you picked it up. It is a little shocking how many of the objects in this photo I still have - the clock, the table, the teapot (not the fox!).

A new blog!

I have just started a new blog dedicated mostly to my Art II class. We've been working on clay animation, and my school will not allow me to access You Tube, and our software's tutorials are all there.....and the kids parents are expecting to be able to see their kids work on You Tube....So I'm going to use my blog as a way to handle all of that. And of course I will include some other artwork as we go, and pictures of field trips, etc.

An upside for THIS blog may be that I will focus more about my own art making here, and keep the school stuff over there.

Ms Bowen's Art Class Gallery

Looking back at 2007

Ceramic artist and blogger Cynthia Guajardo recently suggested using this time to post about what the year was like for us art-wise.

Well, it was a good art year for me. In March I had a one-person show at the Tulsa Artists Coalition which was my most successful one person show ever. Besides selling half the show, the staff was great to work with and the whole experience was fun.

Then I took an online art marketing course from Alyson Stanfield which truly helped me make the most of the whole solo-show experience. Some of the participants have continued to keep in touch on a Yahoo group, and that has been very helpful and pleasant as well. With their help I started my website and this blog. I also subscribed to a rather expensive one-year experiment with TODL (Trade Only Design Library) as an art marketing tool. So far I've had no sales via TODL, but I have mailed over 1,000 postcards to people who have looked at my work there.

I also opened a small Etsy store, and have sold a few pieces there (and have bought even more!). In summer, besides the usual Art Camp here in Cushing, I taught a week of painting at Art Experience camp on the campus of NEO University in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. That was a good experience too. We focused on animals. Then in the fall I attended the photography workshop at Quartz Mountain I've mentioned before, and also taught a woodcut workshop at the Ponca City Art Center. All in all, I sold a record thirty seven pieces of art this year. Amazing.

So, what is this year going to bring? I don't know of course, but I do know I've finished one painting this first week of the year, so maybe it is off to a good start.

The photo I just posted isn't a painting, but a lovely bird's nest that was in the weeping willow that is now mostly cut down due to damage from the massive ice storm we endured a few weeks ago. It has a soft swirling form from the long narrow willow leaves, I've never seen a nest quite like it. There are mountains of tree branches piled in heaps in front of everybody's houses, and the birds have all moved in to those warm sheltered places. I'm pretty concerned that they will soon be building nests there which will all be destroyed by the time the city is finally able to haul the mess away.

My one print

At the Quartz Mountain workshop with Luther Smith, I focused on trying to make one good print. This was a pretty good idea because my allergies made it inadvisable to do much walking around outside and taking pictures. I learned a lot, and this is the best print I got, from our field trip to the town of Mangum, OK. My scan of it loses all the details in the shadows that I tried to hard to maintain, but you get the general idea. I called it checks because of the repeating pattern of squares in the bench, the tiles on the ground and the wall, and also in the shadow.

Back from the mountain

I'm back after a four day workshop at the Fall Art Institutes at Quartz Mountain. While I was there I realized it was my eleventh year to go to the mountain for one reason or another, starting as a writing student in 1979 - the summer of my senior year in high school. I was a camp counselor 3 years after college, and have since been to seven of the fall adult workshops. So, from the days of sitting on bales of straw, to before the fire, to after the fire when the dining hall was a tent, and now a few years in the beautiful new facilities shown here. This year I took a very good course in intermediate darkroom with Luther Smith, (assisted by Konrad Eek) where I mostly concentrated on print quality. I really enjoyed learning to use filters. Maybe I'll post my best photo later in the week.

This second picture shows one of the two entrances to the darkroom - just to the right you can see the large deck overlooking the lake. Working in all this natural beauty is one of the main things that make these workshops so important to my life as an artist. The third snapshot was taken between the studio pavilion and lodge.

One of my student's families has begun a large vineyard not far from Quartz, and since his mom is our high school art teacher, and also at the workshop, we stopped there on the way back and took pictures for him to work from in class. One of his classmates liked the picture of the deer skull hung from the fence, and is working with it.

some6th grade weavings