This was the title of a newsletter this morning ....
and I'm totally stealing it for this blogpost!
It's been a full of fun summer and since I live in Florida,
hard to decide
when summer actually started.
Family, Art, Friends, a get a way, more art ...
I've created a lot of art both on paper and on canvas.
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| The theme was spring flowers, if I recall for a spring 4 Square Makers pop up show with Lakeland Art Guild. The Lily of the Valley was the star of this show! |
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| SeaWorld ... I'd not been since I was a teenager. The penguins were a riot to watch. I'm sure you don't want to see the dozens of pictures I took of them. |
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| Orlando hosted a Spring Market for the needlework industry. I've known many of these smiling faces for many many years but I'd not seen them in far too long. |
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| This was a locally hosted show titled Pink Moon. My piece called "Blossom' was accepted for this show. They had an amazing turn out of all ages. Fabulous ART of all different media. Food and live Music too! Full Pink Moon in attendance as well. |
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| We have two lovely gardenia bushes. This year as I went to cut blooms for the house, poof, in my face a mama bird. Thankfully we have two and the other was not a home to any babies. So we were all happy to coexist. |
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| June was another 4 Square Maker show, hosted by Hillcrest Coffee. These birds flew away to new homes very quickly. |
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| I submitted two of my pieces to the Lakeland Art Guild for their big spring show at The Melvin Art Gallery. AND they accepted both! The larger named Trio is in another show opening this Friday at The Marc Gallery here in Lakeland, Florida. I'm very honored. |
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| May ... Mothers Day! and here in Lakeland we host a huge art festival Mayfaire by the Lake. My friend Lynore, who is my longest friend from when we were little, came for the weekend. We had a blast, didn't know I could cram that much into one weekend! She was also there for my opening at the Melvin Gallery. What a treasure she is. |
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| I doodle, a lot .... this one took on several more versions of itself. The wall hanging was shown in a collective show of many local artists at Mitchell's Coffee House. The lower picture is a tease, you'll just have to wait and see more of it down the road. |
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| Grandbabies!! and my amazing daugther!! What a joy, I dreamed my grands would love my studio space as much as I had loved my Gramps workshop as a child. They did, we had sooooo much fun. We also went to Disney to see some Princesses, oh my! Our first character siting was appropriately Mickey! |
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| After their visit, it was time for me to buckle down and get busy. I was once again honored to be a part of Fine Art at the Magnolia. This time I was determined to have nine new pieces to show. Each with some super rebellious stitching using anything and everything to make them amazing pieces of mixed multi meda fiber art! Show here are Center [sold], Focus [sold] and Dewdrop. |
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| I pumped out those pieces as I knew I was going away for a trip to my home in Pennsylvania. I landed in Philly, did the requisite visit to the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall. I grew up in this state, so of course, I'd never seen either of these! Now I can say I have and all were very inspiring. None of which did I take pictures of ... I guess I was all into the history and reading and listening to our tour guides that I just did not think about it. I have crazy pictures of buildings and architecture I took. No bell! August is Fireman Carnival time, so many of my classmates were in town. Perfect time to visit. One day was spent in my friend Michelle's studio playing with fluid acrylics and alcohol inks, oh my gosh, crazy. This was a planned activity she came up with to help me loosen up with my art. It sort of worked but I still found ways to control bits. |
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| This one was a blast and took me down some different paths than I'd originally planned. For one, it was supposed to be all creams and whites. 'Sea' [sold] did what it wanted to and I'm so glad. As I talked to people about my work at the show, I heard myself telling them ... 'this isn't any one type of stitching, there is stump work, gold work, embroidery, couching, open and pulled work ... it's like needlepoint on steroids' ... which made them and myself laugh. |
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| Back home and I was in full on art mode. I'd started the nine new designs by drawing them as black ink line drawings. Now it was time to keep going, get the last six painted and stitched. Above is 'Bloom', I loved how this one painted up so freely after the lesson back home of letting go of my control ... I had a hard time stitching over it! |
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| From upper left 'Wish' 'Brilliance' 'Lichen' Can you tell I was having such a great time creating each of these pieces. |
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| Last but not least, this one was not from one of my drawings. Down to just days before the show was to open and there I sat at my desk ... what to do. I've collected several pieces of my friend John Kellum's Raku Pottery. My paintbrush water pot is a test piece of his to see how long a special coating he put on it will last. I think it's been a year, still water tight! So there I sat and there sat this sweet little vase. The colors in his raku are amazing and so ... I decided I was going to paint a canvas based on this little vase. Ha! I pulled paint tubes and went a little nuts trying to capture all that color. He told me later that his Mom was a watercolorist, she'd tried to do the same and was shaking her head as well. So I was in good company at least. In the end, I was very happy with the results. |
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| Tada! We all made it, sanity somewhat in tact! This was not all of us, some had other plans for after set up ... like maybe a nap! My Summer wrapped up with a hurricane that saw me at my brothers place in Tampa for a few days. We are all very grateful that we did not have a direct visit from Dorian as did the devastated Bahamas. Here's to fall and more adventures. I have a solo show at Mitchell's Coffee House this November. Later in November I'll be in Houston at Chandail's teaching my 'Marbles' design to a full class. See my blog titled 'Classes' for up coming dates. I've hopefully more to post in that list soon.  |