THE STOCKED MARKET

This Thursday evening, Oct. 13, 08, will be the preview event for the STOCKED MARKET. An annual event/fund raiser for the Junior Women's League of the Roanoke Valley. It is being held at the Roanoke Civic Center for the first time. Past years have been at the Salem Civic Center. I will be there for the opening night with some of the staff from ART ON A MISSION. They have had a booth for a couple of years at this event. ART ON A MISSION offers much more than art. They have antiques, vintage linens, vintage jewelry and more, in addition to a lot of local artists works in 2D, 3D, jewelry, wood creations, photography, candles, handbags, and more. It's a great store and an affordable way to give unique, creative gifts to everyone! Plus you will help support the efforts of the RESCUE MISSION and a lot of artists!!!!! Now back to the STOCKED MARKET, I'm not real sure what the MISSION will have on hand for sale, but I will have miniature paintings and a handout with a coupon inside to get a 10% on Sue Furrow art work through their store at Tanglewood Mall (next to Penney's) Mini-paintings are an afforable and unique gift for everyone. Your childs teacher would probably love a mini painting to put in her window instead of a box of candy or cookies! Give UNIQUE a try this year!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry this a bit long. The images above is a sample of the mini's for sale.

ART ON THE ASPHALT

Well, howdy all. I was way to tired last night to tell you how the new art show went. It was held on Kirk Ave. in downtown Roanoke, yesterday. The opening of the new, huge, gorgeous TAUBMAN ART MUSEUM was held yesterday too. Everyone was hoping a lot of people would find their way over to this art show when they left the museum. It didn't happen. Some came over, but----you know the rest. It was really windy and pretty chilly! You know how it gets between big buildings and the funnel effect with the wind. I enjoyed visiting with artists I had not seen for some time. Next year will be better and I think they want to hold it a little earlier, maybe in October. And "they" are, the staff at SIGNATURE 9 GALLERY. They were so hospitable and good natured. They let the artists use their facilities and served hot cider and a bunch of homemade goodies. Thank you very much ladies!
Now let me mention some shops on ETSY. I was supposed to post their url yesterday, BUT I was just to tired (the bad thing about one day shows). So let me try to post their links now.
Gogokiaka

Elladean

BabyMakesThree


Appears I may have done it correctly. Now I'll go check it out!

LOCAL EVENTS

A small message to remind all of the opening of the new TAUBMAN MUSEUM here in downtown ROANOKE,VA. this Saturday, Nov.8, 2008. It's a really BIG deal and a beautiful building!!! Hope you can visit.



Also going on at the same time is ART ON THE ASPHALT!!!!!!! Downtown Roanoke. Sponsored by SIGNATURE GALLERY. The show will be set up on Kirk Ave. from 10am to 3pm. Please come by after your visit to the museum. I will have mini-paintings that will make great gifts and souvineers of the STAR CITY OF THE SOUTH!



Now please visit the store on ETSY called Random Scraps. NEATO STUFF is sponsoring a Marketing Exchange and Random Scraps is the business of the day! They have lovely scrap booking stuff and handmade cards and more. Just click the highlighted words above. ( I did it right-the posting of a clickable link!!!!!!!!!) Thanks Angie!

WOODY SPOT

Here is a cool, quiet spot to read or nap. I painted pretty fast for me (I'm probably the slowest person to ever hold a brush). I was at my sister's place and I had to finish before her children came home from school. They never stop talking or asking questions and I'm so easily distracted, this piece would never have been finished. So if you have questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch. If you CLICK HERE you will go to Ebay to bid. Thanks for stopping in.

NOW THAT THE ELECTION IS OVER!!!!!!!!

WHOOP WHOOP THE OBAMA WON!!!!!!!!!! Now let's see some change-some progress-some hope. I've been commenting to various people that I thought everyone would relax and get back to business as usual, as soon as the election was over. I hope I'm right. My business has been really slowwwww. I've only had two sales in the last week. Both sales came from the LG Hosp. Gallery - not even from the web (Etsy) where there are supposedly thousands of viewers every day! So let's get this economy up and running again. We artist's are starving! LOL (I found out that means laugh out loud) So what's new-artists have always starved.
Anyway, the big shopping season is here! You may know that I'm not much of a blogger, I'd much rather be painting or swinging my baby or taking photos of beautiful yellow trees, but I'm seriously gonna make an effort to post on my blog at least 3/4 times a week. I'm not sure why, some artist like William Hawkins, don't blog every day! He is a real story teller too. You should subscribe to his blog if you enjoy far-fetched story telling. He has a lot of paintings in his ebay store so maybe thats why he feels no need to blog every day.

So now I'm going to get a snack and be back later with a new painting!
Have a great evening and a busy year-end!

NATIONAL ART CONTEST-REFELECTIONS

ART CLASS AT EAST SALEM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

An art class designed to help inspire the children to make a piece of artwork that makes them think "WOW"!!!!! This national contest can be whatever makes you say WOW in art, music,literature, photography and more. (can't remember the rest).

This was my first attempt at teaching anybody anything! And I must say it was overwhelming. As you can see from the fifth photo, there were 30 children. THIRTY! Mostly ages six to ten or so. That's way too many kids for me. I don't think I was able to get across any ideas or suggestions. I tried to show them how to do a little blending but we were using finger paints. As it turns out - finger paints are very transparent (no body at all). So you can't really blend or buildup with them. I never would have thought that finger paints are so hard to work with. Some children used colored pencils and pastels along with the paint. Some choose to do photography. All in all, they seemed to have a good time! As expected, some turned out some pretty good little paintings. A couple of the photos show how good some are and some show whats on their minds. One photo of Rachael's daughter, shows her pride with a vase of flowers.

This entire post is totally screwed up! I wanted to show a couple of photos then some text, then more photos, more text. But as you can see, I can't figure out how to do that. So, my apology to Rachael. I really wanted this to look good. To look like it was posted by someone that knew what they were doing!!! Maybe Rachael can go in under the comments and post a link to this contest site.

Anyway, the very first photo is of my little sweet grandbaby. The owner of my heart! She had a good time. Had 3 juices and popcorn and ran around giving good advice.

PS-I have no idea why there is so much space between my blocks of text. Maybe blogspot has changed something with the formatting. Don't know.

Hope you enjoyed!

NOTECARDS

Well tonight I finally scanned the images I painted to make notecards from. A series of six. Six vintage garden chairs. I painted them on 8"X8" canvas panels. 'Cuz it is a great size. BUT if I had been thinking "notecards" before I started painting then a size like 4x6 or 5x7 would have been far more intelligent. I had to resize the paintings in photo-shop so a couple look a little squished down. Not bad, mind you. I'm posting the scan. If you are interested, I'm listing them in my ETSY shop. (Just not tonight-I wanna go to sleep-must work at my SUPER SHOES tomorrow).

We have several events coming up soon! (We meaning myself and the art community). I am teaching a group of kids this coming Wed. the 22nd. I say teaching! Ha! I've never taught anyone anything. I'll be winging it for sure. Seriously though, I'm supposed to inspire the kids and hope they inspire their parents along the way. I guess my first teaching assignment is best practiced on kids. Maybe they won't laugh or throw spitballs at me! I love little kids for the first half-hour or so. Then I want their parents to pick 'em up-right away! I'll let you know how it goes.

We have a couple other big events coming up. Probably bashing our heads on the wall, with the media hype about the economy, people aren't out much lately. I'll give you those date later. So I'm off to visit a site on MySpace. Have a great evening.

CLUSTER OF POPPIES

This small piece , 6"x6", is a view from the back yard, looking up a small hill or ridge. It is especially pretty with the evening light. Over the years there have been horses or goats or cows in this little pasture. At the moment there are no animals, so the vegetation has had a chance to grow a bit. I painted this with acrylics on canvas panel and it is varnished. It would make a nice gift for an art enthusiast. CLICK HERE to visit ebay and bidding.

Glad you could visit again.

BACK FROM VACATION

WELL, HOWDY TO ALL!!!
I'm back from my mini-vacation. No, I haven't been on vacation for a whole month! Just a couple weeks and the rest of the time I was painting and building a store on ETSY!!!! and playing with my sweetheart, LILY. I have enjoyed my space but I've got to knuckle down and get some work done. I made a trip to a couple of my gallerys to swap work, etc. Spent several days in my sisters pool (you might remember that I paint her gardens real often). I hate to admit that I haven't gotten any yard or housework done at home. We are into our third year of a drought here in southwestern Va. so the grass hasn't grown much (no mowing) but the house-work will just sit here and wait.
I've got a couple of small shows coming up, both in Nov. Will post more info later.

Hope you can take the time to visit my new Etsy shop - just click on the link at the top-right of this page. I'm offering FREE SHIPPING for the months of Oct and Nov. So maybe you can do a little holiday shopping and save on shipping and save your car's gasoline and save time.

TIME TO OPEN

Here is a new painting! It is a larger piece, 24" x 24", painted with oils on a gallery wrapped canvas. It is adapted from a photo I took years ago on a trip to Germany. Such a beautiful place, the landscape is very much like the mountains here in Virginia. This painting is available at The Little Gallery at Smith Mountain Lake, here in Virginia.