River of Mud

The aftermath of two feet of snow is mud. Lots of mud - everywhere.

Memories of Summer

The short dark days are getting to me now but I know in just over a week, the pendulum will swing and we will begin our planetary migration back to summer solstice. Here's a picture to remind you of the sweet smells of summer. I am unreasonably fond of morning glories. Most people consider them weeds, but I plant the seeds around my porch so the vines will creep up and spread their beautiful colors all along the posts and rails. Fortunately my efforts have made them regular enough that this purple variety has become self seeding. Now if I could get the beautiful white moon flowers with their heavenly scent to do the same thing....

Finished!!

Weekends and holidays often turn into work days in my life and that was the case over the Thanksgiving weekend. Due to illness, our family postponed the big meal until Saturday so I went over to my Dad's and did most of the preliminary wood working on the Torii Mailbox Sculpture. By Friday I was able to sand, stain and drill out the joining holes. Sunday was warm and gorgeous so it was the perfect day to finish up this project before the owners came home from their holiday trip. I am quite fulfilled with the end result and really would like to find some other customers around this area looking for a similar job.

I'm Coming Home

Coming HomeFINAL - KB-1 from Sugarland Music on Vimeo.

This past July, Sugarland recorded a Christmas cd. The video shows the behind the scenes action to choreograph a new holiday tune for that effort. With an intense blues and gospel feel, this song is a triumph. Watch through to the end to get the entire performance as it was recorded live.

Expanding the Materials

When I moved from the world of working for non-profits to actually being one - the artist type - I also chose to leave behind a 15+ year career and love of architecture, drafting, carpentry and general construction. I am mostly self taught in those areas, but still managed to develop a career running a 16 person construction company with multi-million dollar budgets. The pinnacle of that effort was the design and construction of my own home. From the cinder blocks up, it was all my baby. Every system in the house - plumbing, wiring, window selections, chimney design - was all my creation. After 4 years of intense work on that project while working full time for the community, I was so burned out I walked away from the whole thing.

Now, after another 15 years, I am finally taking on an art project that will allow me to go back to the roots. I have designed a sculpture mailbox stand that resembles a Japanese Torii gate. It will have glass elements which are more contemporary than those ancient structures, but somehow it all does come together. Once we have the final site meeting early next week, I'll be buying some lumber and getting the old tools out. Glass and wood. Who would have thought it?

Making Waves

All this work on art fair change leaves me exhausted.

Art Fair Posters

The NAIA conference in Peoria, IL has concluded with a most incredible brainstorming session among the directors. The energy of having all these pros in the same room talking about what works for them and what they want to change was amazing. I was so proud to have the director from my local art fair show up at the conference. She is new to the show and will have to make a lot of changes to bring that shows' quality up, but she sure hit on a hot topic when she brought up show poster competitions. These guys are passionate about their posters and were very eager to share tips with a newby. The Winter Park, FL show also brought along a scrap book with 25 years worth of poster images. Very cool to see the evolution of that show in their posters.

I had the good fortune of having lunch on Thursday with Hyacinth Manning who created the Peoria show poster. The show is raffling the original art as a fund raiser after Hyacinth donated it to the Art Guild. What a wonderful woman. I love her poppies and wish her much luck in her sales this weekend. Good people are everywhere.