High Hand Gallery's Artstock Show!

I know it's been quite awhile since I wrote on my blog.  This summer has been crazy with trips to various places and for various reasons.  But I am here now and busy back in the studio.

Getting ready for High Hand Gallery's Artstock 2013.  It is a large format show with artwork at least 3' in one direction and larger.  I'm working today at the gallery, and several artists are in the shed putting up the artwork for this show right now.  My contribution to the show are three 2'x3' black and white gallery wraps of Bodie Ghost Town.  Here's one titled, "Bodie Beast".  It's a car as you can see, but I have had so many people try to tell me what 'make' it is, and I've gotten everything from Ford, to Chevy, to GMC, to Pontiac.  So I'm calling it:  BODIE BEAST!  It is a close up and the first thing you notice is the right fender with the black hole where the headlight used to be!

High Hand Gallery is also getting ready for the new re-hang inside the gallery for September and October, which means I need to print out a couple more prints of Bodie Ghost Town.  Color prints definitely; at least two large prints of 13x19, and then some smaller 8x10s of what I will have hanging.  Need to print now in order to give them time to dry before I frame them this weekend.

I've been on trips travelling around, but not necessarily for art's sake!  In October I will be on the Auburn Artwalk in Naturopathic next to Roper's Jewelry on Lincoln Street in downtown Auburn.  I will be having my artwork from Europe and I will be able to leave it there all winter until the first Artwalk next year in April I believe.  So that's a great opportunity to be able to hang there during the holidays and have greater exposure!!

Big Canvas Prints

My two gallery wraps arrived yesterday!  The images make you feel as though you are THERE!  I'm pretty happy with them.  One less thing on my list.

This morning I have been putting dates on my calendar for Artstock (September), Auburn Studio Tour (November), my work dates for High Hand, etc., etc.  It's going to be a busy rest of the year - not to mention personal trips planned. ; )  Just when I think I'm going to leave the 'art world', I get rejuvenated.

Here is one of the two images I received yesterday as gallery wraps:

I seem to be having a problem uploading the other gallery wrap image.  No matter what size I put it at, it wants to go horizontal, when it's a vertical image!!  Grrrr.  I didn't have that problem before with my old PC.

I'm kind of caught up right now, with the exception of making labels and inventory lists.  It's still been fairly hot in my studio and I really hate to start up the darkroom which means I have to start up the A/C which jacks up our electric bill.  I did make several cards yesterday to take to High Hand Gallery.  But I am definitely ready for this cooling down that is supposedly coming our way.  I'm ready for winter - not fall - but winter!

Blue Moon Gallery Show "Collectively Speaking"

Picked up the cards for the Blue Moon Gallery show scheduled for Second Saturday, August 11th.  I did a mailing of which I haven't done for a while - well, I haven't had a show for a while so there you have it!  Got those in the mail yesterday.

Worked on more images and making a selection of which ones I was going to have enlarged for the canvas gallery wraps!  I ended up going with two more images from Venice.  Two at 36x24 - had to be 3' in one direction.  I'm hoping I can also hang my two smaller ones with these two larger ones for the Artstock Show - Large Format at the High Hand Gallery in September and October.  Now that I have the wraps ordered I can get back in the darkroom.

I also finished the mask for the Artstock show.  This year several artists have given classes for making masks.  Don't know why or how I got finagled into that, but I did.  I made a Samurai mask.  All the masks that the High Hand Gallery artists made will be on sale during Artstock (inside the gallery) and 50% of the proceeds will go to the gallery to help pay for future events.  At first I was just going to submit the mask all by itself, but after seeing some of the other masks made by the other artists, I needed to kick it up a notch! I ended up framing it by mounting it with screws onto the backboard after covering the backboard with handmade paper.  Then looking up the Japanese writing for "Samurai Warrior" and writing that out and adding that as part of the image.  What you can't see is the black frame around it.

Now I'm off to the darkroom to improve some of the previous images I've already printed out.  I think my self-imposed deadline of getting all 11 rolls of film developed 'this summer' was overly rambunctious (for lack of a better word)!  I mean, it takes some well-known photographers a good week just to get one image perfected!!  With that said, I'm going to take my time to perfect my images.