New Art For A New Adventure

This past weekend I exhibited my art in the small town of Havre de Grace which sits at the head waters of the Chesapeake Bay. It was a lovely location for an outdoor show; the weather was perfect, and the crab cakes were divine!

                                                                                   My two best memories from the weekend

will be about having both my daughters with me as helpers for this 3 day adventure.  And second, receiving a very large blue ribbon acknowledging my collection as "best in" the Mixed Media category. Together these two things made for a very special 66th birthday.

 Looking back, I think this weekend also marks the start of a new chapter in my book of artful adventures.

Chapter One has been a time of experimentation and growth. It started in April of 2010 when I exhibited my first two small pieces of mixed media art at the Del Ray Artisan Gallery in Alexandria, VA. The show was titled What's Your Bag. It was curated by Theresa Kulstad and Karen Schmidt who have since become good friends, super cheerleaders and mentors. I highly recommend all artistic makers engage the support of good friends
like these two wonderful women.

 The DRA Gallery provided a safe place to exhibit. At the same time Judy Gula at Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria provided me with encouragement, support and many opportunities to improve and diversify my skills via her regular mixed media classes. Thanks to Judy and her partner in art Cyndi Souder, two of my art quilts traveled nationally and I created an art quilt which was accepted into the nationally recognized bi-annual art quilt show Sacred Threads in 2013.

The art I've created during Chapter One of this adventure have, for the most part, been relatively small in scale. And range of designs and materials has been wide and varied.                                                                                                           The one constant of course has been that I cut and weave recycled aluminum with torn fabric which I then quilt and often embellish. Over the past two years, my work has grown slightly in scale and the style has continued to evolve.

Chapter Two...........what's next? Experiments with scale......experiments with color....and possibly additional shows. It's time to open the ETSY story and it's time to increase my skills with and use of social networking. In other words, it's time to take it to the next level.....stay tuned for more to come.