October Classes at the Gallery

I am going to begin to offer classes at the gallery in November. The first class will be an Art Journaling class using Watercolor and Mixed Media techniques. I will start with the basics for new artists but this will be a class that can be challenging for all levels. I am offering it at 3 different times--Thursday mornings (3 sessions), Wednesday evenings (2 sessions), and Saturday afternoons (2 sessions). You just need to pick which day works best for you. Each part is a stand-alone session but you'll get the most from the class if you take the both two hour sessions or all three 1.5 hour sessions.

The gallery is small so I am going to limit each class to 6 students until I know more about the adequacy of the space. There is a small price break for those who sign up for the whole session and pay in advance. Please let me know if you have questions or if I've made some terrible mistake(s) on the flyer. Hopefully, if you double click on it, it will become bigger and you'll be able to read it easily and even print it. I now have a mail box, so if you wish to send in a check to hold your space, you can do that.

In addition to this class, I hope to hold a Candlelight Meditation class, taught by Linda Gibbs, on the evening of November 28th, time and details to be announced very soon.

The opening of "Mixed Messages" ART Studio/Gallery in Sanger CA!

What a roller coaster ride the last 2 months has been! For the last 5 years, I've driven by a little brick building in Sanger that I've thought would make the perfect studio/gallery. In August, it had a "For Rent" sign in the window. On August 10th, we rented it. For the past 2 months, we've been cleaning, painting, planting and hanging art--in addition to doing the required permits, licenses etc.

On September 25, I had my "soft opening" of "Mixed Messages" Art Studio/Gallery and made my first sales.

On October 8th, last Saturday, we held the "Grand Opening" Open House from noon till 9 PM. Over 70 people came and we had art, food, wine, music by brass and woodwind quintets. It was a great day. The address is 1310 8th Street, at 8th and Academy, right next to the Oasis Bar.

The gallery is one block off the main downtown street in Sanger (7th Street), a block away from the outstanding Fermin's Steakhouse Restaurant, and almost directly across the street from the soon to be constructed Sawmill Restaurant and themed shopping center. There will be a Fresh and Easy store in that shopping center also!

The gallery is now open Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 AM each morning until at least 6 PM each evening. It will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, except by appointment. The phone number to reach me at the gallery is 559/905-3517.

The official Ribbon Cutting ceremony will be next Thursday, October 20th, at 11 AM.

After Sierra Art Trails. . . . .

My last post was about Sierra Art Trails. The weather was perfect this year but it was a rather quiet weekend in terms of traffic and sales. Julie Mitchell, Vivian Aumond-Capone, and I wish we knew what made it a quieter year than usual. We enjoyed each others' company and the wonderful visitors we had but we are still wondering why it was not as well-attended as usual. Please comment if you have thoughts on the subject. Was it adding the third day? Too many choices of days? Of artists? Too many locations? Too many other events going on? Too tired? Didn't know about it? Too beautiful and you wanted to be at home working in your yard? You've seen all the locations/artists before and decided to take a year off? You've never been and you didn't go this year either? Any thoughts you can share will be appreciated.

Sierra Art Trails/September 30, October 1-2

Tomorrow is Day 1 of the 3 day Sierra Art Trails Open Studio event. Over 90 artists will be showing their work in studio situations in the mountain communities north of Fresno. For the 3rd year, I will be at Julie Mitchell's home studio in Coarsegold with Julie and Vivian Helena Aumond-Capone. Julie makes Spirit Figures and Vivian will have quilts, hand-dyed t-shirts and scarves, gourds and gourd necklaces, and more. I will have cards, prints, and original watercolor and mixed media paintings. At our location, there is a wonderful mix of art and artists and we certainly hope that you will visit during the long weekend. This is the first year that the locations (some of them, at least) will be available on Friday in addition to the weekend. Weather should be excellent.

From Highway 41 in Coarsegold, turn across the highway and go uphill at Pony Express Lane which is right across from the Shell Station. Take a quick right, uphill again, on the gravelled Forest Glen road and follow the signs a short distance to our location.

Whew! A LONG day! And a new look!

Well, things have been happening around here somewhat ahead of schedule. Roy has his new 27" iMac and is very happy with it. So, I have inherited his old iMac and I am also very happy with it. All of this "inheriting" involved finishing up a bunch of paperwork on my MacBook so I could relegate it to the realm of being a "real" laptop now that I have a "real" desktop computer to work on. :) Lucky laptop, lucky me, lucky Roy!

Today, though, I'm still without photo files etc. here on the iMac so I won't post any new photos just yet. Soon, I promise! I need to transfer files from my laptop to here so that I don't have to email a lot of images etc. More progress soon, I'm sure. All for tonight, though.

I have been wanting to use my newsletter header on my blog and I was semi-successful in getting that here though I need to resize it and maybe eliminate some of the white space below it. But I was able to copy it, save it, and add it--so that's more than I expected to be able to do. I also changed the look of the blog again and I think it looks much better than it did.

Loose Ends. . . .

Today's commitment (and it was yesterday's, and the day before's, too.  .  . ) is to sit down at my computer and tackle this heap of paperwork that needs inputting, filing, sorting, and tossing. It's been much too long in the process of getting done and I am determined to be caught up with it once and for all. Or at least for NOW!

When I took Alyson Stanfield's 3 online classes last winter, I made wonderful headway on getting my art business files set up, organized, and straightened out. But then I let things "slip" before I had completed the process and here it is, seven months later, and I'm just getting back to it. But I have done other things in the intervening period that have been productive as well.

One thing I finished up was a wall area in my blue and green living room that is dedicated to a wonderful painting by Bebe Long, a fellow artist in Fresno. She and I traded paintings last fall and I made a special place for her's. Here it is, pictured below. . . . . .

It is a very meaningful painting to her and I am so honored to now have it. In exchange, she has my flamingo painting since she collects flamingos. My blue and green room is enlivened by the pink and I've also added more black and white. (The dog, Cooper, is NOT new!) Bebe and I do a lot of similar things in our paintings--bold, bright colors, stylized people and flowers, and spirals, among other things.  I just love her "motto"--

"Art is the icing on the cake of life."

Another thing that Bebe and I share is a love of cats. We both have yellow cat paintings in our current collections. Here is her "Tailhook" (the single cat) and my "Love is Kind" (two cats with a little mouse friend). Great minds think alike, as they say! And. . . . the best people LOVE cats! :)

At the Apple Store

Here we are at the Apple Store in Fashion Fair, waiting for our desktop computer to either be made well or deemed unsaveable! Hopefully, it will be fixed with the disc repair they are doing and, meanwhile, we are literally salivating as we play with the 27" iMacs! And wish for iPhone 4's and iPad 2's!! But, all in all, we are extremely lucky to have what we have.

The 27" iMacs are so beautiful and would be perfect for artwork and for Roy's music on Finale. Someday. . . . .

Well, I've written a very short blogpost while I've been standing here. I'll close for now and see what the outcome is for the old iMac. More to come. . . . . .