I'm so happy to sneeze you!
With very HOT temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic yesterday and today it feels more like summertime that spring...... but the leaves are opening, flowers are blooming, pollen is wafting and the birds are singing. Soon the light in my home studio will transition to leafy green treehouse light and I will gather new painting references during these warm and flowery months for future pieces. There were a couple of times this winter that I wondered if spring would ever come!
color theory canvases installed
Yesterday was a great, busy day in the studio with a tour for special visitors and the start of a new commissioned painting on the easel. This painting will be of pink rhododendrons and after a good coat of gesso on a new canvas I worked on the sketch throughout the day. Process pictures will be coming soon as I begin painting the new canvas.
I finally got pictures of the canvases that now hang above my studio windows.... what do you think? They provide a great burst of color as you make your way down the artist concourse, and I don't think they compete with the art inside the studio, so I am very pleased with the project outcome. Lots of color fun!
a weekend away
I delivered the postcards and notecards to the DuPont Nature Center in Delaware this weekend, and they immediately started packeting up the notecards for display and sale. 100% of the sales price of my notecards and postcards at the DuPont Nature Center will go to the Nature Center to help with their good work, so go and check the place out and purchase notecards while you are there!
For further information about the DuPont Nature Center, contact Dawn Webb at Dawn.Webb@state.de.us or by calling (302) 422-1329.
DuPont Nature CenterDelaware Division of Fish and Wildlife2992 Lighthouse RoadMilford, DE 19963
After making that delivery we had the rest of the weekend to visit our favorite beaches and spend some down time relaxing and listening to the wind and the waves. It has been a long time since I took a break! We had a hotel reservation in Rehoboth for Saturday night and we spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday by the water.
Sunday morning we drove to Cape Henlopen State Park and found a spot that was new to us and fairly deserted to sit and listen to the crashing waves and to walk the beach. A part of the park is closed to visitors from March until September to protect the breeding shorebirds, and next Fall we will have to go and explore when it opens to foot traffic again. Late in the day we made the three hour drive home and the time away did me good!Click on the Cape Henlopen panorama to view it large in Flickr:)
a Chinese Photography Show and a welcome to our 8 new resident artists!
VisArts hosted a photography exhibition that opened last night and more than 545 visitors and guests came to see 100 photographs that are part of a traveling exhibition to celebrate 6 decades of Chinese photojournalism. Our large galleries provided a wonderful venue for the exhibit and we enjoyed greeting a lot of guests and visitors who have never been to the art center before.
The eight new fiber artists were there as well, having moved into their new studio only hours before, and we were so glad to have them join our ranks and open their studio doors to greet visitors! My studio was hopping all evening and we had a wonderful time sharing information about our art and the art center.Fiber Art Studio @ VisArts Janet T. BarnardJeanne BohlenFloris Flam
Betty FordSharon Janda
Marla S. RudnickAnne Sanderoff-Walker
Zita Simutis
really-really-recycled
Virginia very kindly dropped by the art center at the end of her work day yesterday to help me hang the new canvases outside my studio windows. It has now been years since I was on the rolling gallery steps that I practically used to live on in hanging shows for VisArts, and all that spackling and painting, too. It is amazing how a life path unfolds... and I don't know where I will be tomorrow or next week... but this spot is fine for now. First we laid them out on the floor to figure out spacing, and then with Virginia's help I thumb-tacked them up and made some slight adjustments in placement..... finally hanging them with rows of tiny and discreet brass nails.
The canvases are up, and I will get images of them soon..... I am really pleased with the way they look and the way they translate at their current height above my windows, and it is always a delightful surpise when an envisioned project turns out the way you wanted upon completion. A fellow artist (someone I respect tremendously) gave me the ultimate compliment and said she wished she had made them. She said she doesn't say that often, but when she sees work she really likes she has that feeling... wishing she had created it herself. Her words gave me goosebumps. I am fortunate in my friends.
Virginia mentioned to a couple of people at the art center that this was a really, REALLY recycled project..... and she was right. I had not even thought to tell people about the history of the canvas in the project. I have been saving it for some time now, but it has an interesting history in how it came to me. A friend of Virginia's, and his children, had gone to the dump here in Montgomery County. They found this roll of canvas still tightly wrapped in its plastic sheathing, and apparently the kids all immediately thought of me and asked their Dad to give it to me. I was delighted that someone thought of me and I have saved that length of canvas for just the right project. So not only are all the buttons recycled, but the canvas itself was saved from the landfill. A really-really-recycled project! And I still have some of that canvas left!!!
ooooooh la la
I am so happy with the canvases... all completed now and ready for hanging. They will be displayed horizontally above my studio windows with the blue one to the left. The series, "Color Theory" is very much about MY color theory:) Everyone who came into the studio yesterday has such a wonderful reaction to them and one visitor called them 'jolly'. I love it.
