Madera Wine Trail--back in February!

I'm finally ready to "catch up" on some posts that I started but never finished. The first event to  belatedly-blog about is the Madera Wine Trails "Wine and Chocolate" weekend which took place in mid-February. Fortunately, the weather was gorgeous--sunny, dry, clear, and quite warm. Roy came with me to Birdstone Winery both days of the weekend. We had 2 great lunches, tried some more Birdstone wines--our personal favorite, so far, is their port!--saw some old and new friends, and made some new friends.

I did my first Wine Trails show at Birdstone in November of 2009 and returned for the second time in February 2010. I really enjoyed being there and the events, in general. People love to do wine tasting and it's a great opportunity to meet new art lovers and collectors.

I decided to try something new with my art for the February event. Instead of painting new wine paintings, I decided to do some "Love" paintings instead since they would be shown over Valentine's Day weekend. I also decided to give a 14% discount on any one item purchased on the holiday weekend. Valentine's Day. . . . Feb. 14. . . . . 14% discount. . . . . .  :)

The discount and the wine paintings were both popular and I'm glad I tried a new subject. Everyone loves love, right? So it was a good decision, I think.

The next Wine Trail weekend is coming up in May--on the 15th and 16th. Roy and I will be there both days and also look forward to attending the "Release Party on the Grass" on Saturday evening. Day time hours will be from 10 till 5 both days and the release party is from 5:30 till 9 on Saturday night. The places to go to for more information are Birdstone Winery and Madera Wine Trails.

Mark your calendars and make your reservations--buy a glass!--for this upcoming special event!

Also, check to see my updated list of upcoming events and activities! And if you haven't "friended" me on Facebook, please look for me there soon. I have an individual page (Kathleen Mattox) and a Fan Page, under "Mixed Messages" by Kathleen Mattox. Hope to chat with you on Facebook, soon!

"Holiday Spirit" Weekend/Madera Wine Trail

Hello to all! What a busy life this is! I want to blog about the Celebrate Creativity weekend and I will write more about it, very soon. But today, I am preparing for the Madera Wine Trail weekend which is tomorrow and Sunday. I will be located at Birdstone Winery which is very near the iintersection of Avenue 9 and Road 36, not far into Madera County.

I will be there both days this weekend, from 10 AM till 5 PM. I will have my large wine paintings, a lot of prints and cards, and a lot of small originals, not necessarily wine-related. I think it will be a lot of fun, but at the moment I'm thinking it's going to be quite cold as it's outside. Brrrrrr! But maybe it will warm up and be a gorgeous fall day. This morning it is foggy because it rained yesterday.

Roy had to go back to work--he thought he was done for the season!--and on his birthday today, too. But off he went. We'll celebrate with dinner out when he gets home this evening.

Pack, pack, pack, cut (mats), cut, cut, load, load, load. . . .

More soon--

Ficklin Vinyards Event last night

I had been asked a couple of months ago to display my art at Ficklin Vinyards at a special event. Thanks, K.c. Pomering for inviting me! And thank you, Peter Ficklin, for your hospitality! It was hard work--preparing, setting up by myself (which I don't often have to do, luckily!), talking, talking, talking (which I've been told I DO often do!) to lots of people, tearing down alone and driving home very late. But it was a LOT of fun! Good wine, good food, friendly people, excellent hosts and hostesses, and a lot of wonderful contacts for me, as an artist. I talked to restaurant and hotel owners, winery owners, wine and food and art lovers--and more!

Mostly, I took things related to wine as you can see in the photos. I took 3 large wine paintings, some prints, cards and a couple of small paintings. I sold a small matted original and a small painting so it was a nice evening in that way also. I have some exciting news to share in the near future, but that will come in a future post.

                                                                                                   
In the photos you can see the basic set up. The photos, done on my iPhone, aren't the greatest because of the way the lighting was. But it was interesting because of all the wine barrels surrounding the huge tasting room and because I tried to use the nearby barrels as part of my useable display space. It is always fun and challenging to try to create a welcoming and attractive display area when you are going to a new setting that you haven't previously shown in. I felt comfortable with the way it looked and I really enjoyed meeting a lot of new people from the Madera area. I hope I'll continue my new friendships at the Madera Wine Trail event on November 14-15. That weekend I will be located at Birdstone Winery so you can stop by and say hello!

In closing, I'd like to say that I am going to try to add a little video taken on my iPhone and see if you can view it, hear it and make any sense of it. It is very short and the content is limited. It's more an experiment to see if I can get a video from my phone to my blog successfully. So far, I haven't been able to but maybe today will be my lucky day. (NOTE: It was NOT my lucky day. I'm still struggling with that, though the video is fine on my phone and my desktop. I WILL overcome, but not right now.)

And speaking of "experiments", the last month has been very much a learning process. I love being on Facebook, especially now that I've started a "Fan Page" where I can more easily display my work and invite "fans" and friends to my art events. If we haven't connected there yet, please look for me. My blog is feeding over to Facebook and my Facebook posts are going to Twitter. This is all VERY high tech stuff for me! But it's a lot of fun and it's going well except for Twitter. I am just not tweeting well, as yet! But that will come with time, I suspect.  Well, enough for one post--I'm dying to see if the video works or not!