Faculty Art Exhibit & East Austin Studio Tour

November, 2009
I displayed two paintings in our faculty art exhibit this year. We again chose the HIDEOUT Coffee House, co-owned by a fellow art teacher, as our venue. Somehow I manage to get on this committee every year and enjoy putting the show together. Jean Caffein, newly returned to our ranks, performed for the event. I also bought two wonderful paintings from another art teacher, Eric Cannon. Living Tree #1 & #2, pen and ink with ink washes and prismacolors . I hope to get a photograph so I can post them here. I rarely buy art, but I couldn't live without these...

Our small group of neighborhood artists (16 all together) joined the ranks of E.A.S.T. this year (East Austin Studio Tour). Artist studios were open to the public for two weekends. Carol, across the street, opened her huge back space (3 households of Kents, fences down, large deck space and covered galleries, fire pit, stage with live music...much food and drink) for an eventful affair for all. We all had a marvelous time, though not much art was sold. These days, only smaller inexpensive items seemed to be attractive; cards, baubles and the like.

Winter Solstice

December, 2009:
The official Wassail poster for MUNDI is now posted! The inspiration for the character on the poster was Jim Carpetas, the Father Christmas of the procession, who also plays the tin whistle for the house band, Bucolics Anonymous.
I am also creating a backdrop for the stage this year, a snowy scene through a Gothic window. I may not be able to resist putting some fairies and elves peeking in...they will be discreet.

Other projects during 2009 summer.

I've also started a series of paintings about communing with animals. This one I call "Exciting News from a Large bird". My summer is coming to an end in a few weeks, so I hope to finish up several paintings from both of my summer projects.

A third project has been a curved counter top for our kitchen. It started out being an art project, but ended up in having to hire a carpenter/plumber as it got out of hand.

A fourth project was doing a series of three bird drawing workshops for kids. I came up with a set of posters that helped the process. I don't have to talk so much.

Summer 2009

Summer of 2009 began with a project started around Spring Break. "WISH SHINGLES". The idea beginning with the "visioning" idea and get togethers with friends bemoaning the state of the world and lack of cultural community. We should all be a ten minute walk from our nearest pub, coffee space, cafe or village hall. Only in other countries older than ours does this exsist, as the U.S. was mostly designed with the automobile in mind. And so we talked of such spaces. I came up with the idea of making signs or shingles that could be portable and would accomodate community space where ever we were. I cannot seem to fathom an antidote to the delema of the automobile. We are all addicted. Unfortunately. Howie and I have placed this GREENMAN (who represents everything we long for) sign on our front porch and host a regular happy hour every Friday evening...

Jan. 2009

This month I worked on my ARTSPACE gallery. Here it is:
ARTgallery: http://www.myartspace.com/artistInfo.do?populatinglist=home&subscriberid=nbthpocjc9ufyhi1
Some time I will get old slides scanned so I can put older work on the site. I also need to shrink some of my images to put them on. But the site looks pretty good. Enjoy!