The best part of the show was meeting April Raber, the artist that created the beautiful "Mandala" painting that we just hung in the living room. What a wonderful treat! Even nicer was the flood of wonderful, warm and heartfelt praise of April from every single artist with whom we spoke about our most recent purchase.
Coming home without artwork is pretty much impossible for us ;-) We met so many incredible artists whose work I would love to have in my home (self-taught painter Paul Bond, ceramic artist Carol Tripp Martens), many of whom were happy to talk about their art. We bought a small piece from Stephanie Cunningham, an artist that creates "duets" with Betty Haight. Stephanie paints beautiful landscapes and Betty creates lovely figurative work, both of them incorporating other media. The two canvases are joined and a story is created, written on a tag and tucked into the backside of the work. The notion of collaborative work is fascinating to me. I asked Stephanie who wins when they disagree on which pieces should be joined. She smiled and reported that she wins because it's her husband that joins the pieces. LOL. I told her that I'd often thought of putting an ad in the local paper soliciting artsy friends. It would be fun to have a partner in creativity! For now, I'm happily plodding along with the collaborative art journal project with my sister Lisa. She's continues to be much more productive than I am. The inspiration of the art festival came at the right time and offered a gentle kick in the caboose to get moving on my end of the project. My son will be back in school in a little over a week, and I'm making a mid-year resolution to schedule studio time as if it were a job starting on Monday. We'll see how much I accomplish!
A friend took me to lunch this last week and we spent a few hours catching up with each other. I shared with her the challenge of a recent dinner at the university where my husband works. My table mates were a former congressman/now senior administrator, two college/university presidents, and faculty. Everyone at the table but me had a Ph.D. or was in the process of completing one. I think the thought most often occupying my mind was, "Duh." Seriously. I was unable to participate in any conversation (something anyone that knows me well would claim to be impossible ;-) My girlfriend asked me why I didn't share that I was an artist, and I about choked on my iced tea. She gave me a stern look, told me that I was incredibly talented, a true artist, and then suggested quite seriously that I might need electroshock therapy to snap me out of my lack of confidence. That was a good laugh! It was also a good reminder to relax, and remember that there may be a lot of folks with a Ph.D. that don't know how to pronounce "giclee" and probably think gesso is some kind of frozen dessert. Bahaha. That's my story and I'm sticking to it to make me feel better. ;-)
