Nice little array.
I had entered eight paintings in the Imperial County Fair this year and seven of them won ribbons! Four of them – the first and second place winners will be on display in Pioneer’s Museum in Imperial until the 27th.
It didn’t rain at my house overnight on Saturday. However when I got to Indio, I found that there had been two hours of steady good rain there. Ugh. The city people had gotten there a little earlier and removed all the tarps to let the paintings dry. They needed to be dry before we could start on repair work, so we had a little time to commiserate between each other before we could start. Rafael’s painting – Lincoln, and Bijan’s painting (we think we read each others’ minds when we came up with such similar design ideas) had the most damage.
Some damage to the right hand corners and both hands that required a little rework. The throat dried out fine. The wash marks on the ocean wrist I just incorporated.
There were still puddles around 9:30am
Lincoln needed a nose job.
Bijan’s tarp leaked, causing a lot of damage on the neck and into the clouds.
Repair work done, just in time for the judging. Except that about 2 minutes before Kathy came by, a woman let her 3 year old run through the painting. Then yelled at me for chiding him!
The last competitor finished later in the day.
Amateur entries continued throughout the day, to the extent that there was so much judging for Kathy Dunham to do that the awards ceremony was about 40 minutes late. Here were the results in the professional category. The prizes were $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000.
1. Bijan Masoumpaneh
2. Rafael Valencia
3. Jeni Bate
The artist as part of the environment. 8’x8′, chalk on blacktop. (Photoshopped to be vertical, though you can possibly now see some of the foot damage.)
One of my students who enjoyed my watercolor collage workshop also mentioned that she has a Sizzix machine. This is a hand-run press with embossing templates. Immediately we both saw the possibility of adding this texture to my refractured watercolor work. Last week I created a new painting for a refracture:
… and yesterday when she was at sm’Art studio for a follow-on lesson to my Absolute Beginner’s class. she loaned it to me again to emboss the pieces I had cut. This is what they look like so far!
The two on the left are our original test to see if the watercolor paper would emboss nicely. The rest are the refractured watercolor.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out when I assemble them. Watch this space!
Although I write poetry for my own paintings and have written poetry for the artwork of others, I had a first last month when one of the attendees at the reception at my joint show in the Glass Outhouse Gallery wrote a poem for one of my paintings. George Howell wrote the following poem for my painting ‘Dark Mist Arising‘:
Smoke Tree
For Jeni Bate
Our eyes align
Along the horizon,
Prisoners of our feet,
Firmly anchored to the earth.
And the sky is a sigh
Of promise and release,
The free range of cloud
And soul.
You cut the skyscape
Into a stack of cards,
And rearranged the clouds
“Dark Mist Arising”. Mixed Media on panel 48×24″.
Here’s what’s happened and happening at Skyscapes in February.
#1236 “All the Way”.
“All the way” went to its Forever Home a few months ago. A couple days ago I was blessed with a pic of it in its new abode. We don’t get to see a lot of the surroundings, but it looks great in that frame.
One of the silliest things I didn’t do on Wednesday when Christine Lamb was setting up her half of our show at the Glass Outhouse Gallery was to take some photos of her half of the gallery. Yesterday at our reception I corrected that.
Christine’s Jewelry. Many of the items are made with upcycled denim.
We had a two-person bad perform for us Hunter and the Wick’d for the afternoon and had quite a few people drop by, or come in from the advertising.
I really like the painting on the right at the end wall.
I sold two small paintings and Christine sold some earrings and a clock.
Christine doing some inventory. The clock on the left didn’t last long!
I really fell for this little gallery and was quite jazzed to have been offered a last-minute show due to a cancellation. The artist who was to have been at this show turned up. She had cancelled because she had torn her rotator cuff on the side she uses a crutch – double whammy. She was doing a lot better now and is looking forward to showing at another time.
Bookwork is so much part of our job!
I also got to meet Jaymie Arquilevich with whom it’s planned I’ll have a 2-artist show in 2018.
