Hanging a show tomorrow

The night before the night before. It's like the eve of Christmas Eve, two days left of school when you were in grade 6 and couldn't wait for summer holidays. Tomorrow I am helping to hang the Aurora Art Group's Art show and sale which will take place in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan on Saturday the 8th of May. I will be one of eleven artists participating in the show.

All those paintings I did this winter and a few that I just finished will finally get seen. I can finally ask my artist friends what they think of my latest works. It's kind of late to make any changes once they are hanging in the show, but maybe I will get some good advice for my next paintings.

I paint alone, many artists do. It can be a lonely pass time. No one to discuss techniques with, to bounce ideas off or just to share the long hours with. Some artists can't create any other way but by locking themselves away for long period of solitude but I'm not one of them. I like to talk about what I'm doing and get advice or even criticism in order to feel like my paintings are really moving forward. I used to paint with many of the artists in this group but have since moved away from Prince Albert and have not found a similar group to get together and paint with. Actually now that I think about it I don't think I got near as many painting finished as I do now. hmmmm.

My partner, who's never been interesting in Art before he met me, never been to an Art Gallery before he met me and certainly has never been asked about a painting in progress and what it needs to give it that perfect final touch, has really stepped up and has become very good at helping when I'm stuck. Maybe because he isn't an artist he can see things in the work that I miss but then again he is a realist. He wants the subject in the painting to look exactly like it should look in real life. He has a little trouble with my latest paintings of cows, I made them blue.

Tomorrow I will unwrap about 30 paintings that only a very few have seen and put them out for the world, or at least for the guests of the Aurora Art show to see. A piece of myself is in each of those paintings and I had only myself, and my non artist partner, to decide if they are any good.
It will be a painful and an exhilarating day tomorrow.

Snow makes time to sew

I left the sunny warm southern tip of Texas about 3 weeks ago and had a great drive home. We stopped and explored two wonderful unique towns along the way home, Fredericksburg, Tx and Deadwood, SD. Both are full of history and we enjoyed walking around each and soaking in the scenery.

We got home to the south east part of Saskatchewan on a beautiful sunny and warm day and were so excited to be home. Well it's the beginning of May now and it's either been raining or snowing since we were teased with those couple of nice warm days. I have to wonder why we left Texas so soon.

One good thing about crappy weather is that I get to stay inside and paint. It's to cold to mow grass or pull weeds so I have no excuses. I finished 6 of the paintings that I had started while in Brownsville. I also got working on my latest sewing project. I had this idea to turn t-shirts into handbags and had all the pieces cut out in Texas and ready to sew once I got back to Sask. where my sewing machine was waiting for me. It was a great idea and they turned out pretty good, but much tougher than I thought. I used a pretty heavy interfacing on the stretch material of the t-shirts and the lining was kinda slippery. Putting all those fabrics and textures together was a challenge. I managed to figure it out though and turned 5 t-shirts into 5 interesting looking bags.

When that project was done I went back to painting but this time I combined painting with sewing and made some hand painted shopping bags. No t-shirts this time but 100%cotton. Once I had the pattern cut out the material looked pretty boring so I got out my paints and did a little something on it. What fun! I tried painting on wet fabric, dry fabric, using pens, then indian ink with a brush.

Everyone needs reusable shopping bags, we are filling the world with plastic ones and when you see how they get caught in the trees and stay there for years, maybe decades you know you need to stop using them.