Studiology

No Rules Car Show

The Pigeon Forge Rod Run is always scheduled for the middle of September and has been going on for at least 40 years, its history is a bit murky since it has altered and changed locations over the years. Since my husband and I love old cars, especially hot rods, it was something we decided to attend for our 45th wedding anniversary. He likes the mechanical aspects; I love the creativity and various paint finishes. The amount of cars/trucks and motorcycles that arrive is beyond belief. On the main strip there are at least 2 and a half miles of cars on both sides of the 3 lane highway, 2 to 3 cars deep! I ventured out for 4 nights, walking at least half of the show and also attending the big event in the LeConte Center where the most polished of cars were on display. The weather was perfect, and I met some crazy car people! It was interesting to note the median age of attendees, if I have to guess I would say most of the car owners were mid-sixties to seventy years old. As it was pointed out to me by my husband, it's expensive and hard for younger people to participate, additionally this is the crowd that drove the 60's and 70's muscle cars, (wild people of the time). Indeed almost all of the cars on the strip were for sale, this is the place to come if you are in the market. My photographs are generally of special paint finishes, pinstriping, and creative builds.

We managed to make it home without a car in tow, but it was tempting!

 

 

The Whimsy Opening

A person could not ask for better weather on opening night and the town was out in throngs. The show looks fabulous and I'm very happy to be a part of this month's exhibits. Everything remains up for the month of September and there's still the "Walk and Talk" on Sunday, September 10th at 2:00. Here are a few photographs of the show and my fellow exhibitor. 

There are over 30 pieces hanging between us, so it's worth a gander if you're in town!

 

And Then There's This

August began with an email from the McGuffey Art Center with a proposition, do a show, fill two of the main hallway walls with art. What do you say? And of course I said yes and here we are, the week before September and the week before a big show. I am paired with Michael Firkaly and the show is "Whimsy", which was all hung yesterday and today and indeed looks very whimsical. 

To build and paint 15 new pieces would be impossible in 3 weeks, so I did my best and managed to complete 6 new and rework others. Time in my studio has been diligent and lengthily, but what came out of that are some really fun, brave and new works. The reception is this Friday, September 1 from 5:30 to 7:30 and the show hangs for the entire month. There is also an Artist's Walk and Talk, Sunday, September 10th, 2:00 - when I will detail some of the whys and ways the building process came along. 

First Fridays in Charlottsville are epic and I'm excited to be such an integral part of the action. Lots more photographs of this event will be posted as well as a few before and after. There are 4 shows occupying the McGuffey building for September and they are all spectacular!  Not to ignore the concerts, restaurants, and fun shops.

August

I'm having a brave and full summer, a lot of which I will share here. A mix of gardens and art, all good stuff. 

My wet meadow has been spectacular and only planted this spring. Hummingbirds seem to be there 24/7 and there have been numerous monarch caterpillars, as well as lots of other pollinators. The seed will be used to fuel my front yard which we have stopped mowing and has numerous wet spots.

With only a few months of not mowing part of the lawn, I was excited to find a Spiranthes cernua or Nodding Lady Tresses in the mix, a tiny orchid. There are also numerous asters popping up, and I will be adding seed of other native asters this fall.

On Fridays we visit a local farm to pick-up our weekly produce. Part of the package deal is access to their cut flower fields which are incredible, so on a weekly basis I get to put a couple of flower arrangements together.

And today, yes TODAY, I bought a greenhouse. The size is 11 x 16', and to tell you I'm excited is an understatement! Small in comparison to the numerous greenhouses of Windy Hill days, but certainly sufficient for anything I need here. 

Delivery is a few weeks away, giving us time to pour cement and get some things setup.

As if that wasn't enough, the big art gallery had a snafu of sorts with scheduling and offered me space for a show. That was determined the first week of August and the show opens September 1! I will share the space with another wonderful artist - Mike Firkaly and the title is "Whimsy".  We are a perfect pairing, and I can't wait to see this come together. Details and snippets of finished pieces will be forthcoming. 

In the walking mall gallery I have added new Pez dispensers, something I had backed off of and am happy to be making again. There is a bit of an obsession with Sasquatch and similar creatures, all after the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference and a history of conversations with believers (or are they?). 

More to come, lots more!

 

 

 

Downtown

A recent call to jury into another art gallery was well received and I'm happy to say that I have become a member of the C'Ville Arts Co-op, located on the downtown walking mall of Charlottsville. Across from the Paramount Theater, where I first heard Doug Tallamy and Michael Dirr lecture on the same day, one of my fondest memories and a first visit to Charlottsville. 

Now that I'm in 2 galleries, there's lots to do and I have just finished these 2 pieces. Still on my shoe kick, the first was created with a pair of "Nine West" shoes so I named her "She Ruled the Land of Nine, East and West". The colors were inspired by beets, specifically the juice of beet root, which is a beautiful purple.

Small hands point to East and West on the bottom.

This next piece began with a rabbit, a lovely running rabbit that needed a nice space to run. Titled "Through the Meadow", it actually has a hidden compartment behind the rabbit, the front piece held in place by strong magnets. 

A few other nifty things are coming together, and I'm super happy to be in 2 of the greatest galleries in Charlottsville. If you come this way, please stop by.

 

 

Watercolor

With the arrival of Covid, the Visual Arts Passage organization started a Thursday night drawing program and named it "Illustration Isolation". Free for anyone that wanted to draw, a 2 hour time slot with 4 photographs and a time frame of 20 minutes per image to try your hand at illustration. At the end of the evening, the team of teachers would take a look at the drawings of the night and encourage everyone to keep coming back and draw along with them. My daughter began and in short order my grandaughter joined her, she was only 8 years old at the time. The youngest member of Illustration Isolation. After a few weeks I decided to give it a try, no idea of what media I would use and rusty as one can get. 

Now, post Covid, the name has changed to "Drawing Hive". I suspect that there might be upwards of 100 people drawing, from all around the globe. My own initial attempts were with various markers, sometimes charcoal and a few with pastel. After some thought and knowing the time limit, I settled on watercolor, thinking that a little paint goes a long way. After a few horrible starts, and a second realization that one has to first draw the scene and then paint it, my determined self-kept the course. 

A few changes in my strategy have helped tremendously, one is the paper. I now use Arches Aquarelle watercolour paper - 140 lb. It lets the watery paint hold on to every nuance in the colors and layers. Secondly, I changed my paint palette to one that is designed for skin colors, since we almost always do people, that way I am not working around multiple colors that rarely work with skin tones.

Three plus years later, and still going, I personally feel like this exercise has helped me tremendously in all of my art. The practice of shading; you have to understand that the photographs are usually selected for deep shadows and back lighting, make an artist understand directional light. The effort to actually make someone look like they should is seriously the hardest part! It's fan art, based on current movies or popular streaming series, a learning curve every Thursday night. 

All who draw can do as they please, draw 1 or all 4, and many of the artist are using a tablet to create. The talent is incredible and even though I usually finish (or nearly finish) 2 or 3, I usually only post 1 (Instagram) that I am satisfied with. Some nights none, just because it wasn't my night.

Here are a few recent watercolor sketch/paintings that made me happy. 

light from the top right and back

light from the bottom left

light from the top right and side left

muted light from the top right and back

muted light from above

I would encourage anyone that wants to give it a try to sign-up with "Drawing Hive" or Visual Arts Passage. To see more of my daughters and granddaughters, look up on.thursdays.we.draw on Instagram.

 

A Waffle Party

My oldest granddaughter just turned 12 and decided that a great theme would be waffles. Waffle sandwiches, waffle sundaes, even a waffle relay with multiple toppings. She wore a waffle hat and reigned over 4 waffle makers to act as master waffle chef. It was briliant!

The relay was a race between 2 teams to put all of the toppings on oversized cardboard waffles.

Chuckles all around for her fathers t-shirt.

And Birdie was camped out, waiting for morsels.

Who knew waffles could be so much fun!

 

Food and Ornament

The vegetable garden has provided, enough so that I feel that I've reached my vegetable quota and then some. And just as I feel that I can't eat any more vegetables, the zucchini is ready! A gardener has to remember all of this when it's winter, when the seed catalogs arrive, when we wish we had more fresh vegetables. 

With more time to process these delicious vegies, I have discovered pickled beets. Definitely not the same as what my mother served up, and I would proceed to sneak to the dog under the table (not sure if she actually ate them), but perfectly delicious slices of beets with a texture that is not mushy or crunchy but very satisfactory. At this point I have made 8 batches of pickled beets, more than anyone should actually make without overdosing. 

Other plans on this 3 plus acres is expansion of a meadow, this time smack dap in our front yard. The wet meadow is coming along very nicely, and with 6 inches of rain in a week, most of the perennials are very happy in their space behind our house. So the expansion has begun in front, we stopped mowing and today dragged a York rake through the existing turf to rough up the ground. I spread seed of native perennials and grasses, knowing it's not the best time; many will wait till next spring to sprout, but it's a start. A few islands of sumac or Rhus typhina run along the edge. 

During spare evenings and mornings I have had the privilege of helping over at Woodhenge Gardens, the home of Margo Reed and Jim Murphy. They are daylily hybridizers with more daylilies than I dare guess. The seedling bed alone is 800 feet long and very wide! When I can help, it's in the display bed, the daily removal of spent flowers so visitors have a better view of what's open today. That alone takes hours with 2 or 3 people, but it's something I used to do at my own nursery - on a much smaller scale! I find it very satisfying. 

Daylilies with patterns in the petal are something they are working on. These are 2 that I am fond of:

Aside from that, I drove 2 hours to pick sour cherries, the orchards in this area only have sweet cherries. I make Cherry Bounce with only 3 ingredients; sour cherries (whole), fill a quart jar almost to the top, add 1/3 or 1/4 cup of sugar, fill the rest of the jar with Brandy (I prefer Christian Brothers) and wait. So the cherry bounce is processed and will be ready to taste come Thanksgiving. 

Life is good! 

 

Travel - the Show

Just finished and delivered my pieces for a show titled "Travel". Without hesitation (once the show title was announced), I knew that I wanted to make shoe art. A total of 3 are complete, and each has its own unique twist on travel. 

As I was building or placing items, the lion head (formerly a door knocker) was a questionable choice, only in that I wasn't certain what I would name it. Letting it sit for a few days, I was certain that it was a good choice, the placement seemed too ideal, the overall shape was well balanced. Once it was finished, the perfect name came to me "Top of the Food Chain", a title that I loved since it was a human's shoe and a lions head. 

Next came the Lady of Grace or the Virgin Mary, she stands inside of a shoe that was very unique but ultimately a real challenge to paint. An artist often works their way into a corner, so to speak, and this one proved challenging in many ways. In the end it was my favorite, mostly because I feel that I conquered it.

The largest one is probably at least a size 10 man's shoe, so there was a lot of room to work with. I had recently taken an online class with Michael deMeng and he used this fantastic map idea, so of course that works perfectly with my traveling shoe. The title is "The Rambling Sole".

All are available at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottsville, VA where they will be on display for the month of June. The first Friday reception is June the second and I will most definitely be there to see the other travel art.

May and Memorial Day

The busiest time of year for the gardener may be May! And so it went here with marathon plantings and the beginnings of my first harvest in a new garden. Seeds sown on March 2nd were of various cool crops, now almost 3 months to the day, the harvest is tremendous. Only 2 are still growing and may or may not work; cabbage and broccoli aren't ready yet, and so goes my experiment with what might need a low tunnel and earlier sowing next year. 

Salads rule the day and I especially like the nasturtium petals in the mix with just a little bite, but not as strong as the foliage with its strong and spicy mustard taste. The sweet peas rarely make it into the house, note to self - sow more. Collard greens are also something I want to add to my garden for next year, after making collard greens and loving them. 

The meadow planting is filled with about 250 plugs of native plants, the last were planted this past week. All seem to be taking a hold well and there will be plenty of photographs. The bed is on the moist side, so some of my choices were filipendula (Queen of the Prairie), veronicastrum (Culver's Root), monarda (Bee Balm), asclepias (Butterfly Weed), Lobelia cardinalis (Cardinal Flower), and eutochrium (Joe Pye Weed). 

Other small beds are full of perennials that were moved from Aldie, plus a few new ones that will function as pollinator gardens with a mix for cut flowers. I was quick to add Scabiosa 'Fama' for cutting, maybe the most beautiful flower in the world! Even the buds are gorgeous!

Here's just a smattering of others, a real mix of ornament, vegetable, and wildflower;

This was also the month for my granddaughters 6th birthday. As one of her grandmothers, also known as "light haired grandma", it is such a joy to see her more often, we live only an hour away now. My brilliant daughter held another perfect party, I was just lazy with the photographs. To record the day I offer this single photograph as she blew out her candles, and you can see that she is growing into a beautiful little girl with lots of poise (although some days we say "spunk").

Lastly I held another "Sista's Weekend" which was a blast! The house is perfect for these gatherings as I now have enough bedrooms and bathrooms for everyone to have their own. Of course we stayed up late and laughed like crazy. The husband spent the nights in the cabin, the perfect man cave, so all went very well. The youngest sister took the photograph, so she isn't in it, but indeed she was here. 

So May was the month of family, gardens, and fun. There was still time for some art and that will be covered very soon since I have to deliver the new pieces shortly. 

Lastly, I want to remember those that have died, loved ones we knew this Memorial Day Weekend in serving the country. I lost a cousin in Vietnam and my son just found out that another Marine who served with him just committed suicide (the second that he served with). Embrace your family, enjoy your weekend, but take a moment to remember those we have lost.