Day before yesterday – Snow!
Today this:
And this:
Flowers even under foot:
Last week I trimmed all the Japanese maples. I was told they look best when their “bones” show. Bones being their trunks and curved branches. But you have to stop short of having it look like Dr. Seuss designed them.
Art Group met here last Sunday. For about twenty minutes I got to relive the recent trip to Australia. I showed them the lovely gifts I received and purchased. I went through the pages of the latest and thirteenth book on alcohol labels….especially those collected down under. Here is a page of the latest 19th Crime wine label….so far only available there and not here yet.
A couple more pages.
They were good wines in very good company. They know I peel the labels and save them in books where I write about the wine and them, so they help by finding good ones and after the bottle empties, they help me get the labels off and onto a napkin to pack into my sketch book or whatever is handy to bring home.
I put away all the treasures that I brought home. I stacked up the prints I made while there and tucked them away…never sure what to do with them next. Some I will take back next year to sell at the tutors vending tables…maybe.
I mailed off a large painting that came back from a recently closed gallery. It went to a buyer out in Seattle who was baby sitting another one I mailed out to a friend. Here is the one that she baby sat:
And the one I sent out to go into the babysitter’s apartment:
I really loved working this large. But they are hard to sell when there is so much to chose from, when there are so few commercial galleries that do not already have there “stable” of artists, when you do not have visitors to your studio, when you do not sell work online.
But I did buy some very large pieces of paper. And I can stitch as well as draw, paint, etc on the surface if I am careful not to get too heavy handed. Then I could roll them up. I could roll them all up together like a guy in our art group…..just one bundle of very large amazing images all sharing a relatively small space. Then if someone wanted to see them, I could toss them out onto the floor like the owners of the galleries showing Australian Aboriginal artworks. The viewer could walk around them and ponder chin cupped in hand, eyes squinting…looking for something that probably is not there but something they think they see.
I may have just talked myself into giving this a go. If I took them to a gallery, they would simply get pinned to the wall or clipped on the ends of those carefully measured lengths of fish line. Then if any one of them sold, the buyer would have to deal with the framing.
Speaking of framing, I just finished framing three prints…the large crow and two large white line prints…crow and heron. They hang where the large nest above was hanging since it came home. Not sure what I will do with the pieces that return from the two exhibits out there now. I am trying not to make work….but it is not working.
The one good thing is that I am on the tenth and last of the Karin Fossum crime mysteries. I am glad of it. Not sure how much more murder and mayhem I can take right now. I say that but I also ordered another recommended series of three Norwegian crime stories by another author.
I am quite sure they are escapism from the real world and the need to strangle members of Congress and their leader…..and the idiots that thought it was a good idea to put them in office.
Next week I will address new things that will be visible on my website. Things that are becoming necessary in today’s world of internet. More on that later.
For now I will just go back to the cleaned studio and look for something small to get involved with. Something that can make me smile. Something I can tuck away out of sight. Something that can easily fit into the waste bin.
Spring Fever will be over next week. Promise.