whew

Boy life can get busy fast.

Tuesday

Another June, another summer program at the Music Academy of the West. More vocal students, more costumes, more coordinating.

Today's adventure was driving down to Upland to pull costumes. This year I am coordinating with a local SoCal costume designer. We decided to meet at a logical point since we were coming from different home bases. Hers is in Long Beach, mine is in Ventura.

The logical meeting point ended up to be Irwindale, where the 210 & 605 freeways intersect. Irwindale. There are 2 landmarks that I know of in Irwindale: The Miller's Brewery and the gravel pits. Neither one seemed like a good place to leave a car. I found a Costco in Azusa, not Irwindale but just over the city limits. Lots of parking, safe and $1.99 pizza.

What a trek- 90 miles one way. through the San Fernando Valley... through the Other Valley: San Gabriel... and keep on going!

I took an alternative route home because there was an accident in The Valley somewhere. I stayed on the 210 and wound my way up around the foothills and through the Santa Susana Pass into Simi Valley. I love the Santa Susana Pass. It looks like a perfect backdrop to a Hollywood Western.

Tomorrow we meet in Downtown LA. We are shopping for fabric. There are gypsy costumes to be made!

Details

I'm working on the details of setting up a shop on etsy.com. I'm calling it Noodleville. For those of you who haven't heard of the website: it's a website dedicated to the handmade item. There are all sorts of things from jewelry, photography, clothing, handbags, ceramics for sale. The key is that everything has to be made by the artist/artisan. Nothing manufactured or mass produced.

One of my friends here at Sea Breeze Art Studios turned me on to it. I was looking for a venue for my newly created line of hand built ceramic bowls. I finally found something I enjoy creating that seems to sell. Each bowl or plate is an original. No two are the same, they might be similar but not exactly.

The texturing of the clay is intriguing me. I have burlap, block prints & letters that I am embossing with. Some of the bowls have positive messages on the bottom. I have made a couple of "batches" of bowls and friends and family have snatched them up. A good sign.

Create with Abandon

Exhibiting your artwork is an interesting experience. Getting use to putting your artwork on display takes awhile to get comfortable with. For me the creative process is so personal that hearing opinions and comments can be uncomfortable to difficult.

When I am painting, I go in to the "Creative Zone". You know when you get so engrossed in what you are doing that time & place disappear? That's what I'm talking about. I believe that there is a connection to the Divine that happens in the zone.


It is similar to meditation. In meditation you sit in silence and listen to the Divine. There is a channeling of energy that happens. Creating is a channeling of energy from the Divine into this world.

Displaying artwork that comes from such a place exposes a vulnerability. It takes some practice getting use to showing publicly. But I believe it is important to get your artwork out there. It is how visual artists communicate. It is how we connect with others. And after all isn't it all about connection and relationship?

In the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz one of the agreements is "Don't take anything personally". Obviously negative or unsolicited comments are best not taken personally. But Ruiz also talks about doing the same with positive comments. That we need to stand on our own opinion of ourselves, be confident of our own value. Know that you did your best with no regrets.

The more artwork I create with abandon, the more confident I get. The more exhibits I do the easier it gets.

Opening the Window

Tonight my exhibit Through the Window, my first solo exhibit opened at Sea Breeze Art Gallery in Ventura. For a holiday weekend, it was well attended. More people turned out than I expected. I was very pleased. People from out of town came by. People who collect my work came by. There were even new people who came by.

I made 2 sales in the gallery and 2 sales in my studio. I think that the opening was a success. I have 3 more receptions and I hope they are equal or better than this one.

It takes a village

Today the plan was to install my art exhibit at Sea Breeze Art Gallery. Being my first solo show it would be appropriate for me to be excited. But on the contrary I awoke apathetic. I was slow to get up and on the road. I did manage to get out of the house and run the necessary errands required to hang the show: Office Depot for tacks & clips; Lowes for brackets & screws. These were needed to install the artwork.

In order to get me where I am suppose to be I make arrangements to meet people at specific times... so I show up. This works 99% of the time. Nobody's perfect. Anyway, I arranged for two friends: Monteve, a mutual resident artist at Sea Breeze & Sonya, owner of Art & Soul Studios to help me with the exhibit.

The concept needed more than two hands. Instead of framing my paintings in conventional frames I used windows demo'd from old houses. This required some rigging in the hanging of the windows so that they didn't fall or tear out the wall with their weight. I was apprehensive about how this was going to happen. But Sonya was able to figure out how to hang the windows with L-brackets.

So Monteve and Sonya showed. Vonder another resident artist wandered in a little later and Monica also a resident artist stopped by even though she was exhausted from work. Sonya's husband Pat came by too... because we needed muscle to drill into the cement wall.

All these people showed up to help me. It makes me a little misty to think about it. I was feeling rather blue when I was alone but once I got in to the process of coordinating the images with the windows with the energy of my friends swirling around, my mood picked up. Sometimes it takes a village.

Everything came together without too many problems. There were a couple of broken screws, a few large holes in the walls and one of the drill bits broke in the cement wall. Everything fixable. I am very pleased with the way the show ended up. There is one window I need to re-arrange but other than that it is all ready for viewing. I did not think I would have everything up in one day. I gave myself 3 days.

And on goes the life of an exhibit...

Solo Mio

Monday afternoon I start the installation of my next art exhibit. It just really hit me: this is my first solo show. I have been invited, juried and showcased in many different exhibits but this is my first solo. Hmmm.

It's not a large gallery but it's large enough to make your teeth clench when pondering if you have enough paintings to fill the space. I have about 25-30 paintings but the pieces average between 5x7 & 6x12.

A couple of weeks ago I calculated the layout and realized I didn't have enough work. That's when my teeth clenched and my upper lip curled slightly with dismay. So last weekend I painted 5 more pieces to fill the gaps.

This has been a challenging show. My past showcase exhibits I have had a clear vision of what the concept was and exactly how to hang the pieces in the available space. This show has come together but it wasn't immediate.

One challenge to work with: my budget is presently limited so I can't frame the work. So I'm using recycled windows to hang in front of my work. The next challenge was how to hang the windows so they don't fall off the wall. Now I'm obsessing on how I will get the actual images in the right position so they show through the window properly.

One thing I have figured out: that I will figure it out on Monday.