Celebrating Mid-Summer, Studio Update

Celebrating Mid-Summer, Studio Update

Welcome to mid-season studio update with news since mid-spring of Sunwise Open Studios Celebrations, shows and art. This is another favorite time of year, when we lounge behind the Morning Glory wall, as we take breaks from the first Harvest. We feel so rich as we appreciate our bounty: the medicine plants and herbs, tomatoes, squashes, flowers, fig trees, bamboo, and baled hay.

Sunwise Open Studios Celebration

Preparations for the next Sunwise Open Studio Celebrations on August 5 are underway, I look forward to seeing you here again, 1-4 pm. Opening the studio keeps me focused on cycles of producing new art, new jewelry and new theme of the season. This time it’s the first harvest of Lughnasa. I have gathered, dried and artfully packaged seeds, herbs and lavender – in a very limited supply!

I’ll show you recent works in progress, for a series called “Atlas of the Year”. In this series, I am distilling and integrating over 30 years of studies about the 4 seasons – 4 directions. Find many artworks from some of my most popular series at special pricing. Some have never been seen by the public. In the boutique, find cards, totes, mugs, pillows and pouches.

Find more information and directions by clicking here.

New Art

I have finished seven out of twelve for the “Atlas of the Year” series. Each month has a collage and a drawing, above are the examples for the last month of the spring-east season. For each one I have written segments that describe the collage and drawing symbols and go into detail about the lessons of the time and place. This is soul work. I allow the images to surface. In this one I had a light drawing of my mom and dad as youth. The hieroglyphic for friendship shows two friends on the threshold to the path to the rising sun.

Little did I realize my mother would die in the following month on Solstice. This for me is the comfort of art. It’s been a very quiet time of reflection and not much outer world focus. It was important for me to write about her. By the time of the Open Studio I will have the past month’s collage, and start of the next.

I love flowers but rarely paint them. It always seemed to be too much detail to handle – and all those leaves, ugh. So I’m rather pleased with my loose approach, not trying for perfection. Rather than use a model, I gaze into my garden, then later just dive in from memory.

There are fifteen new bead necklaces in the studio, a few are on the jewelry page. It’s been an honor to handle such treasures as Lewis and Clark beads (1760 AD) and some very ancient Phoenician, Roman and Islamic glass. I’ve put them together into Healing Necklaces.They will be shown for the first time at the Open Studio.

Continuing Exhibits

225: Artists Celebrate Kentucky’s History continues until September 23 at Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea. This exhibit includes over 60 works by 51 Kentucky artists who have recorded and celebrated numerous facets of Kentucky’s rich 225-year history. It was wonderful that my “Pleasant Hill Botanicals” sold. The gallery requested a replacement, and luckily I had four more.

Kentucky Painters Invitational, sponsored by Berea Arts Council and shown there first, is now at St. Joseph Berea Hospital until August 16.

Illustrated Word, sponsored by Kentucky Arts Council is now at it’s fourth location, Hopkins County-Madisonville Public Library until August 24, then it travels to Lincoln County Public Library in Stanford through October. 

New Tools

As an older person, well let’s say a sageing person, I have never been thrilled about technology. It was hard enough to keep up with slides in the olden, golden days. My computer assistant was warning me about imminent demise of my computer, along with my old work-around Photoshop 6 and Publisher. So I got a really fast computer. It was not as much trouble orienting to it as I thought it would be. Then I got Photoshop Elements. It’s actually fun. I am so thankful to my friend Laverne Zabielski who suggested long ago that I approach designing my website and other media as a work of art. That has made all the difference. Working with my server, my website is now fully secure as a https://.

 

Thanks for your interest!