Come out to ArtFest!!

Event Date:  Saturday, August 4, 2012

Location:  ArtFest is held on Center Street between Main and 3^rd Streets in downtown Bloomsburg, PA.  Bloomsburg is a town of 12,000 located a couple of miles from Interstate 80, along the Susquehanna River.

History:  This is the fifth year Bloomsburg has hosted ArtFest.  The juried event includes fine art, food from local restaurants, live music, and art activities for children.  The goal of ArtFest is to provide a lively, comfortable atmosphere for the general public to see art, meet and talk with artists about their studio practice, and purchase fine art works.

Hours:  The event runs from 10 am to 7 pm

The North Mountain Art League (of which I'm a proud member) is sponsoring this year's ArtFest and has a fine art double booth at the festival.  A few of my smaller recent works will be on display and for sale.

Iron Heritage Art Show

The 14th Annual Iron Heritage Festival will be holding events throughout the week of July 14-22  in Danville, celebrating the rich history and community of Montour County.  IHF and North Mountain Art League are happy to present the juried exhibition "Life on the Susquehanna". 

EXHIBIT:              "LIFE ON THE SUSQUEHANNA"

THEME:               VISUAL ART DEPICTING LIFE ON THE SUSQUEHANNA

WHO:                   North Mountain Art League artists                     

WHERE:               Studio Brick Dance Studio
                             118 Walnut Street, Danville, PA
OPENING:             Opening Reception Thursday, July 19, 5-7pm

EXHIBIT DAYS:      Friday July 20, 12-5pm

                              Saturday July 21 12-5pm

                              Sunday July 22 12-3pm            

New Painting

It seems that my stay on the other side of the world has (temporarily?) replaced the hills of the Susquehanna Valley as my muse.  How long that will last, I’m not certain, but there were so many things (people, landscape, experiences) that moved me, I think the detour may take me quite a few places off the previously beaten path. 

Here, for your viewing pleasure is the first Filipino piece.  While inspired directly by a scene surreptitiously caught on a broken dirt road in the Chocolate Hills of Bohol, it could be a scene from any number of dusty, hill side abodes on either side of the world -- in this century or the one before.  There was something about the old woman and the dish rag that reminded me of someone long ago, and I could almost hear the word “Baba” echoing through the hills.  She was distantly, hauntingly, familiar, yet exists a world away from any place I had known before.   I have a sense I won’t be alone in this feeling when this painting makes its debut. 

"Saturday in the Hills"  24" x 36"

Another Show Opening

Gallery 102 at the Moose Exchange in Bloomsburg has a new juried exhibit, "Metamorphosis", opening this Friday, April 20th.  The artists' reception runs from 6-8pm and the show will be up until June 23, 2012.   One of my "Portraits of a Girl" paintings will be part of the show.  This particular piece hasn't seen a gallery wall in quite a few years, so it is very exciting to bring her back out!

Show this Weekend!

I'll be showing some of my newer work at Danville's Annual "Spring Thaw" Art Show and Sale at Hawkins Chevy Showroom (next to Weis Markets, Mill Street, Danville).

The show opens tomorrow, Thursday, April 12th, from 4-8pm, and continues Friday 13th and Saturday 14th from 8am-8pm.

To Everything There is a Season

Change is inevitable.  Without change, there is no growth.  Without growth, there is no life.  And without life, well, that’s that.  My art has changed with time much as my life has.  The thoughts, circumstances, people and emotions that inhabited my life at various times also inhabited my art, either explicitly or implicitly.  It goes without saying that as the landscapes of my life changed, so would the things I create.  To try to make a creative muse last beyond its natural time is futile.  When the life is gone from it, so is its utility.  And we move on.  Change I can accept.

But the art, itself – that which was created – should last forever, right?  What was made stands as a testimonial to what was.  After all, isn’t that what art is about?  Something meant to last beyond the time, place, moment and artist?  Except, of course, when it doesn’t. 

This weekend was a hard reckoning of this fact.  Faced with paintings that have seen too much time and less than perfect conditions, I made the choice to neither fight to keep them as they are, nor to discard them as relics of the past, but to change them into different, new, versions of themselves.  While I can embrace change, and the notion of repurposing something worn, but loved, into something useful again, this was no small feat.  These paintings were children born from a different me.  And while that me no longer exists, she did, as did they, and they were loved.  Admitting they have passed their usefulness in their original form—that I allowed them to fall into decay—was hard enough.  Taking a knife to them even harder.  But it seemed like the last, best way to pay them, and the time they came from, the respect they deserved.  Far better than letting them continue down the descent, dusty and unseen, simply because I lacked the courage to do otherwise.

The first of these reincarnations will make its debut soon.  While I am pleased with the life I have breathed into it again, I still don’t know quite how I feel about it.   Is it merely a shadow of its former self?  Or something truly better?  Regardless, it was still really hard.  And there is more repurposing to be done.  Like the first run after weeks of slacking, I dread the discomfort and pain that will come as I am squarely in the middle of it.  But I hope that on the other side will be catharsis, and a sense that it was worth it, and that I (and they) am better for it.

NMAL 20th Anniversary Show

The North Mountain Art League is celebrating their 20th anniversary with a juried show at the Artspace Gallery in Bloomsburg.  Opening reception is this Saturday, January 21st from 6-8pm and the work will remain up until February 26th.  All work is for sale and I have a BRAND NEW PAINTING making it's debut in the exhibit.  Come by if you are in town!

Artspace Gallery
221 Center Street
Bloomsburg, PA