Carmel Anderson

Marci and I went to the Hidden River Art Festival at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts yesterday. Nothing gets me all jazzed than talking to artists and looking at their work. One of the first booths we stopped at was Carmel Anderson. I was immediately draw to her painting because of 1) interesting subject matter 2) the bright beautiful colors 3) texture !!
This is what Carmel says of the Women's Series:
Artist’s Statement for Women’s Series:
Painting the deep, rich and often complex souls of women is paramount to this series. I began reflecting on the subject of women and wisdom as I approached a new phase of life. While pondering the concept of wisdom I observed, studied and reflected upon what it might mean to be “a wise woman”. Birds represent a hope which I feel everyone desires in their life, as eloquently expressed by Emily Dickinson’s poem. I’ve come to see that wise people have chosen to face challenges of life directly, and consequently emerged stronger and wiser. Observing these women as they love, share, learn, forgive, while living contently and fearlessly, this is the power behind this series. My hope is that my art resonates with your soul wherever you may be in life’s journey.

Hope is the Thing
with Feathers
That Perches in the Soul
And Sings the tune
without the Words,
And Never Stops at All......

Emily Dickinson

Jim C. Brown

Wonderful paintings. Mixed media--paint, plaster, silver leaf and photography. I love the ethereal quality of this art. His palette is very simple and elegant. I enjoy looking at the texture of the plaster and layer upon layer of paint. Fabulous!

Nancy Standlee

Whilst (love that word) I was googling something, a link for Nancy's blog came up. I love that she's a learner, taking lots of workshops. Her work is vibrant, lively and just plain fabulous! She has slideshows, workshop photos.....it's a fantastic blog!

Got art?

Maybe I've mentioned before that the Madison Area Open Art Studios is the weekend of October 4-5. I'm making plans for continuous slide show, demonstrations of traditional calligraphy, body painting, monumental lettering, whatever!

Wits' End Studio

Finally Chris has got her studio remodeled and in celebration has started a personal blog. I think she has plans for an Etsy shop too but that link doesn't go anywhere interesting yet.

Madison Open Art Studios

Which reminds me, the Madison Area Open Art Studios is happening again next fall, the first weekend of October. I checked the site and there is some kind of meeting next Tuesday, so it is good I checked. It is possible that registration of artists has been extended past the last deadline that I was all hurrying to meet last month, or it could be the website hasn't been updated. You could try it and see.

Photography in the neighborhood gallery

I was sitting on a bench talking on my cellphone yesterday, next to a sandwich sign advertising a one-day gallery show, when the wind switched around to the south and tornado siren sounded. I sought shelter, as you do, in the gallery where it happened two young fellows, Joe and Eric, were having a terrifically varied photography show, and we talked.

We talked about the other Saturday events happening the neighborhood that I had been surveying. We talked about the gallery space on Lakeside Street, and about art fairs and what is an artist to do these days of modern times here in the future. We talked about their signs which said EXPLOSION (a nine-letter word in three lines) in a square typeface newly designed by Joe (only the caps because he had a hard time making lower-case look square), with a sort of flower-power look, which were hand-stencilled onto the signs. They had big photos for free, or mounted ones for minimal cost. Even the big wall ones mounted on foamcore were only like $150. Joe has a day job and does websites, but his is down. Eric does creative media consulting at BrickHouse (the cool pictures are all on the link) and does wedding photography too and works in a frame shop and was willing to frame anything I was interested in to my desire.

They had both black and white and color pictures. They had abstracts, landscapes, architectural photography, baby pictures, still lifes, long-exposure nighttime photos, and band performances. Film and digital. Have I left anything out?

Need anything for your wall? Thanks, I already have some.