Let's put on a show!

On the homefront, first things first, here's the summer weight lap robe for HP, knitted from various harvested cotton yarns and leftover sock acrylic self striping yarn, from the Log Cabin quilting type design I pinched from the Mason-Dixon knitters.

The nice part about knitting a lap robe (I tried that as one word, and it looked like either something to do with alien abduction, or a new electric toothbrush) is that you fit it on yourself as you go. Once it nicely covered my own lap with a bit on each side to tuck in, I declared it Done,it was well received, and is now in use.

Then on to the Larger World Out There, the art exhibit, to be exact, where a dozen of my paintings are now nicely exhibited, first solo show in the new Gallery at the new Library, all the heavy lifting done by Jinny B. the doughty director of the Library who has never in life met a challenge she couldn't find at least six ways to overcome, and Donna S., herself an established artist as well as a library professional,



here they are, left Donna, right Jinny, cheerful despite a couple of hours' hard labor.

both a terrific Hanging Committee for me! Hanging a show is not unlike wallpapering together, particularly when one of the participants has committed, I mean created, the works in question. So we done good.

Just a couple of details here from the show:








In the next couple of days Jinny will do her fab. job of pressing it i.e. doing the press releases to all and sundry, and usually is so generous in her prose that you wonder if she's really talking about you, but it's great all the same. And she'll create the catalog, a very easy one this time, since it's: Orchids One through Nine, and Trees One and Two! no individual names, just decided to go for simple this time around, since the subject matter is so evident you don't need much in the way of clues to go by.

One of my best mentors, Maggi Johnson, look her up if you want to see how flattered I was by her taking on my art and advising me and insisting I start to show, many years ago, used to say about my more obscure monotypes: well, dear, you know what you're saying, and I certainly know what you're saying, but the general public might just need a little help with this! so I took that to heart and started spending time creating names. up to then it had seemed superfluous, since I'd already said what I wanted to when I made the art, but I had to concede that subtitles might be a friendly gesture.

Hanging a solo show is a rush, as well as a fearful, terrifying thing to do. It's not my work on those walls, it's me, who I am inside. Scary stuff. But I learn such a lot from people's comments, kind and otherwise. And if I sell a piece, that's nice, too, but far from the reason I do it in the first place.

I'm not heavily into the commodification of art, or in letting the marketplace tell me what to make next in order to sell it. When someone needs a piece enough that they want to buy it, and give it houseroom, fine, I love it. I do put prices, though they're kind of irrelevant, mainly because I don't want to undermine other artists to whom the selling is more of an important issue. Group loyalty, I guess.

This was a particular personal thing for me, since it signaled my continuing to be able to make decent art despite all the demands on my life and time with the ever continuing and increasing needs of HP. So I'm still connected, though there were several months when I thought this would never happen again.

So that's us!

Now back to your regularly scheduled viewing of soccer and tennis...