Angel Eyes Gallery in Rehoboth

We drove a carload of new paintings over to the gallery in Delaware yesterday. I have been going there for years and it is my favorite gallery in Rehoboth. They have been showing my work for some time and do a lot of business year round.

This next Saturday they are hosting an opening and artist reception for Martha Pileggi and her work will be featured at the gallery from June 13th through July 9th. The artist's reception is from 4 to 8 pm and Rehoboth will be hopping during the Second Saturday Art Walk.

art after hours

Despite a very rainy evening we had a nice turnout at Art After Hours last night and I met some wonderful new people and made some good networking connections, including a man who is starting up a giclee printing business. A dancer performed and all the artists were there mixing and mingling.

I spent the day yesterday re-arranging the studio and preparing a stack of work to go to the gallery in Delaware, and also made plans for a summer sale on all my available work. (So if there is a piece you have been pining over, now is the time to ask me about it!)judith@judithheartsong.com

I got the orchid hung for the event last night but need to move the spotlights and still need to get a good formal portrait of the piece, which will be challenging with the glossy surface. A job for another day.

fireworks

They never fail to bring back memories of other times and other places. In this third phase of my life, after childhood and marriage, I get to decide how it will be and what I want. For the first time in my life.

CCC 27th Biennial Exhibition

The Creative Crafts Council opened their 27th Biennial Exhibition last night and we attended to support two of my good friends. One friend organized and chaired the exhibit and another participated and won a well-deserved award for her creative talents and beautiful jewelry. (They both also happen to be fellow resident arts at VisArts.) The show is being held at Strathmore Mansion and we wandered and looked and visited with friends as the rain fell outside.

A few favorites:

a gorgeous hawk brooch
a glass house
a quilted rooster
a quilted healing garden with buttons and beads
a copper and enamel bowl
a ceramic crow
a wooden vessel
a paper dress
loom woven creations with copper wire

The show runs through July 11th........

The Mansion at Strathmore
10701 Rockville Pike
North Bethesda, Maryland 20852

"Good design is a great combination of common sense, unusual imagination, clarity of purpose, aesthetic insight and a deep reverence for the love of life." millard sheets

the times they are a changin'

A group of new paintings will be going to my gallery in Delaware, which means that I will be re-arranging the work in the studio yet again. (Lots of fun actually.) It is always good to change the look of the studio and move the art around because it makes people see new things and old things differently.

I have decided to keep the orchid that I am top-coating for now, and I will hang it on my display wall. It is hard to choose which pieces to keep with me for the time being and which to let go, as they become friends. The sunflower reverse that hangs above my sink is staying, the peacock, the Koi, and the snapdragons.... and then I will pack up a grouping for a drive to the beach one of these days. Paperwork and consignment sheets need to be prepared and as always, there is so much to do.

Time to start my day.

studio progress on the orchid

When last you saw the orchid it still had a white background as it was displayed at my solo show in April at the Washington School of Photography. The process photo hung beside it at the show and many people wondered what I would do with it. (So did I.)

Back in my studio at VisArts I started with a lush green background, and then I spent a day dribbling gold acrylic down the canvas to create a golden glow. Some bits of gold leaf were next, and now I am adding layer upon layer of shiny topcoat that will bring out all the jewel tones and add depth. In these photographs a layer of glaze is wet and 'milky'. It will dry clear and then I will add successive layers. The new work table in the studio is the perfect height and size for glazing and working flat.

waterlilies at the Mystic Aquarium, Mystic, Connecticut

On a trip to Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut last year I took lots of reference photos, and so far one has moved on to become a painting. The aquarium was fantastic and Dr. Robert Ballard walked by as we ate lunch in the afternoon. I love the format of this long, narrow canvas and the image would look great on notecards. This is one of the paintings I plan to print as a giclee.

the wind and water

We drove to Delaware on Saturday, a regular trip that we make on a regular basis, three hours there and three hours back. I usually do the driving from the five lane inner loop of the beltway to feeder roads that take us across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis and out into the country on paved roads through farm fields now planted with summer crops, to dirt roads with quaint names. It is a long drive each time but it takes me to the wind and water and trees and grass... to a place where only natural sounds fill your ears and all stress and strife is forgotten in searching for water-worn pebbles and sea glass and treasures that the waves release.

It was a day of waving grass and golden light, the smell of wheat and tall cut grasses and the sharp tang of the water, the sun on my shoulders, and the sound of shore birds feeding and flying and swooping. The temperature was perfect and the sun was gentle with just enough clouds. The horseshoe crabs are still breeding and we placed the ones stranded high on the beach gently back in the water when no shorebirds were feeding. The red knots could still be seen, many having started the last leg of their journey North for summer breeding. Beautiful birds.

With a stop at my gallery in Rehoboth to say hello, and the book store across the street where I found references for a shore bird painting I want to start, we got back in the adventuremobile and drove home in the late day light... home by 9:30 in the almost-dark of summer. It was a perfect day filled with conversation or none. A day when the world is only as big as the space between us, and yet filled with flat water as far as the eye can see. A day to restore the soul and re-adjust priorities, because what really matters when you sit on warm sand filtering millions of grains through your fingers humming a wordless tune no one else can quite hear in the sunshine of early summer.


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