Big Day for Open Studios

Today was the reception for artists in Open Studios, at the Art League gallery.  I learned a couple of things:

1)  Next year, I want to volunteer more, so when I go I know more people.  It's kind of no fun to be there alone.

See all the people?  I didn't know any of them.

2)  Next year, I will submit a larger piece.  Here's what mine looks like:

 The red arrow indicates the sad little piece I submitted.

3)  Next time, I will not leave the house, ever, without a stack of postcards (that have my dates, address, etc.).  I looked and looked  and couldn't see my cards on any of the three big racks they had for artists to put their cards on -- either all of mine have been picked up (unlikely) or somehow my cards didn't make the transition from inside the building to the display tables outside (in which case I'm bummed).  I meant to go over there yesterday to see if restocking was in order but never made it.  Next time, I'll know.

It was a nice event, nevertheless.  The artworks are fabulous -- mine looked pretty puny in comparison.  I was really struck by a gorgeous photograph of a cobblestone street -- it kind of took my breath away.  (It's the first one on this page of his website.) When I got close enough to read the tag, it was Tom Jacobs' picture -- my photography teacher.  Of course.

They had tents with food and drink outside and a marimba band, which was nice.  Lots of people!

 

On the home front, my friend Jana and I got most of the canvases hung yesterday -- and they look much better in my "studio"! The preview show is kind of overwhelming.

 

Hope you have a great week!

Hooray!

I'm delighted to report that Viv in the UK has signed up as my 100th follower!  

~~Thanks, Viv!~~ 

Stop by her blog, Desktop Dreams, to say hello!

Five Fact Friday

Five Fact Friday comes around again -- I love to play.

1.  It is a fact that I have 99 followers.  99, people!  Won't someone step up and make it 100?

2.  I once was a vocalist in a supper club show, when I was young (and slim); I've always appreciated great vocalists.  I came across this video of Luther VanDross singing at the NAACP Image Awards some years back, and it is stunning.

3.  I love macro photography, but I'm not very good at it (yet).  One problem:  my hands shake a bit, and I'm not one to have my tripod at hand in those situations.  Bugs or butterflies confound me. You have to have a lot of light.  But sometimes I get something that's okay.  These are quite small berries on a tree:

4.  I wish my name were Melisande or Maeve or Melanie -- anything but Elise.

5.  Our daughter wants a gecko.  Actually, she wants anything, a mouse, a lizard, a frog, something.  We keep reminding her that we have cats, one of whom is a mighty hunter (Buttercup) who would not rest until the mouse/lizard/frog/gecko was hers, for lunch.  Here's a gecko who posed for a picture at a Canon macro workshop I went to once:

Cute, right?  The only lens I will ever in my life want any more (seriously, Ed), is the Canon 180mm macro I used to take this picture.

Happy Friday!  Hope you have a great weekend planned.  Me, I'm putting books back on shelves.

Look what I made today!

Today was an absolute artsy day for me.  In the morning I went to my watercolor class, abandoned the paintings I had been working on and started working out of the "realistic abstracts" book.  My work wasn't great, but it was a) transparent and layered, instead of being worked over until it looks horrible, and b) not detailed, which is a big thing to me.  I have a long way to go to be able to paint in that way, but I'll plug away at it.

Then, I left class early to go to my favorite place to play in San Jose, A Work of Heart.  I've done a lot of workshops there, but this one was a lot of fun.  It's a "mixed media shadowbox," or "Spooky Shadowbox," as I would like to call it.  Here it is:

 

 Linkup to AlphabeThursday

It's a small canvas turned backwards and painted black.  Then we made a boatload of polymer clay tiles, which we stamped and embossed and baked and painted black and then highlighted with white and silver.  We also did two kinds of image transfer, on the right, and in the middle something really cool -- you paint the area with elmer's-type glue, and then when it has a skin on it, you put white paint over it and it all cracks to a nice effect.  Finally, I chose a "scaredy cat," a little metal thing, and glued it into the shadowbox area so it protrudes from the hole.  I think it came out great!  We stamped cobwebs on the edges, too.  A very fun project.

My sister's coming to visit in October, and I've arranged for her, me and my daughter to all go down for a "Juicy Collage" workshop.  I'm hoping she'll like it, but shhhh . . . don't tell her.  (I don't think she reads my blog.)

Have a great day tomorrow!  It's Friday! 

 

Getting back to normal --

Today was a day of peace and quiet for me -- home all alone, no banging, no sawing -- just enjoying the stillness.  One more picture of my floor and I'll stop, I promise.  This is in the daylight, and I tried to get the color right -- 

It really has a lot of redness to it, which I love.  I just can't get over how beautiful it is, and I'm so happy that it's done!

So now that you're totally sick of my floor, let's move on to something else.  For Open Studios, if we can, we are to demonstrate our work.  I thought about making a video of screen shots and a voiceover and showing it on the tv, but the screen capture program I got is not all that easy to figure out, so I decided to abandon that as a means of reducing my overall stress.  Now I'm doing something like a science fair display -- I'm putting together three pieces of mat board and telling the story through prints made of screen captures and captions to explain what's going on in each part of it.

The mat board is a lovely shade of dusky purple, but you can't see that.

I am hoping to get around very soon to see all of you -- I've been remiss in that this week.  Oh and Buttercup initiated the new rugs today -- she had a visit to the vet for her annual vaccinations, deworming stuff, her anti-flea pill, and got her nails clipped, so of course she came home and up-chucked on both new rugs.   I guess it had to happen at some point.

Hoping your week is going great!

Yay!!!

It's late, so this will be quick.  Here's where I've been living for the past two days:

Only one small area of the room I've been closed up in.  Tripping over everything, climbing over stuff to where I sat with my laptop on the bed.  But outside that door . . . magic was happening!!

Here's a very bad view of the living room.  No books back on the shelves, yet, the furniture's not in the right place and my walls are definitely not that yellow!  They're much lighter and warm, not garish.  But look at the floor!

Buttercup and October are having a ball -- well, Buttercup is, anyway; October's zonked out on the rug.  But Buttercup has discovered that her toys, especially the little mousies she loves, work *so* much better on the floor!  They roll and skitter all over the place!  Here she is taking a little breather before she starts running back and forth again.

I'm just thrilled.  I lived with that yucky, awful carpeting for so long and I was desperate to get it out of there before Open Studios.  So now it's done, and I have a whole gallery wall where I can put my pictures!  Yay!!! 

Over halfway laid --

Day 1 of the floor installation -- they got over half the floor down. Yay!  

It was a long day, from 9AM to after 6 PM.  I  was supervising from behind the bedroom door, me and Buttercup.  They were very efficient, very focused, very skilled at what they did.

So I took a few pictures:

They were really fast about pulling up the carpeting -- it was gone in no time, at least in the part that wasn't underneath furniture that had to be moved from here to there.

Early on, they had some of the floor laid, and I was so excited!

 
And by the end of the day, they had more than half of it laid:

Terrible cell phone picture, but the dining room (from which I'm taking the picture) is done, as is most of the living room -- yippee!

They said it will be a whole day tomorrow, but once they're finished cutting and placing the  floor boards, it will be more quiet!  The job will require a lot of finishing, so that will be the rest of it, but I'm sure that part will be less stressful on the ears! 

I think it's turning out beautifully, and I'll be so happy when it's done!