Friday Finds: ATC Swap and Happy Birthday

Quick! Swap those bloomin' ATCs
You can still get in on this month's ATC Swap at Nashville's Wishful Thinking shop if you get over there today with six ATCs designed around the theme of "Flower Power." Organizers have asked artists to incorporate the word "bloom" into the cards.

The deal is you drop off six by the 15th of the month and you get five in return. If you deliver the ATCs in person, you get to select the five cards from other artists plus you get a free gift.

The store is at Old School Way and Main in Nashville.

If the drive over to Nashville isn't in your cards for today, think about attending a free class on making ATCs July 22 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Although the class is free, store owners ask you call 812-988-7009 to let them know you plan to attend. You can trade the cards you make that day with fellow classmates or work on cards for future swaps. The theme for the August swap is "Look What the Cat Dragged In," featuring anything to do with cats -- both domestic and wild.

Happy birthday, Gabe
Stop in The Venue tonight at 6 p.m. and wish Gabe Coleman happy 30th birthday. He'll be celebrating at the Friday night reception honoring Amy Kaye Taylor, a landscape artist from Ohio.

Friday Finds: Great place to paint

When I first visited Sycamore Springs about five years ago, I knew I wanted to paint there.

When my mother took up watercolors last fall, I dreamed of painting with her and my daughter.

Yesterday, I got it all: I painted with Mom and Meredith at Sycamore Springs.

It's a beautiful, peaceful place not too far away, and on a weekday you may have it almost to yourself. We showed up around 9:30 a.m. and painted till 2:30 p.m. The only other person around was a grounds crew staff member who volunteered to move our picnic table into the shade. If you're new to plein air painting and worried about being watched, this is a good place to get your brushes wet.

The natural beauty can be stunning: Little Blue River meanders through the park, morning sun illuminates limestone cliffs, sycamores tower overhead and lush pine forests muffle the wind and scent the air.

From Bloomington, it's about a 75-minute drive down S.R. 37 South. The park is two miles southwest of English. Take the first right after the railroad (Church Street),  and you'll see signs to the park after you cross a low water bridge. If you have a GPS, use the 717 W. Tunnel Hill Road address. And if you want to know more about the park before you go, check it out at http://www.sycamorespringspark.com/. There is no admission fee.

Friday Finds: Good read and great community event

Here's a magazine you won't find on the newsstand
If you like the how-to articles in the watercolor magazines, you will LOVE Palette magazine. The entire magazine is chock-full of advice, tips, exercises and demonstrations.

I picked up a free copy at the Watercolor Society of Indiana's June meeting, and immediately pored through the 32-page issue. In the last two weeks I've gone back to the issue multiple times. To subscribe to the quarterly magazine, edited by Christopher Schink and William Lawrence, call 800-227-2788 or visit the Web site at http://www.thepalettemagazine.com. The magazine subscription is $22.95, but the Web site also offers a free e-mail newsletter.

Arts Fair on the Square
Tomorrow's a big day in downtown Bloomington. You can start with the Farmers' Market, move on to the Arts Fair on the Square and finish the day at A Taste of Bloomington. The Arts Fair runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and features work from nearly 70 artists and craftspeople. Local performing arts groups will provide entertainment throughout the day.

Friday Finds: Hurt books and a hometown finale



Final curtain for Lotus Dickey Hometown Reunion
This weekend's Lotus Dickey music and arts festival on the Orleans Square has been billed as the last. That's sad, but it also makes it even more special than usual. The free event starts tonight at 6 p.m. and runs till 10 p.m., and then it resumes tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. and provides 12 nonstop hours of music. In addition to the stage entertainment, check out the jammers' area, the Saturday morning Farmers' Market and regional artisans and crafters.

Buy a hurt book

Interweave is selling damaged/bruised books at half price. Go to http://www.interweavestore.com/Hurt-Books-and-Overstock-Sale.html to check out the offerings. Click on either the Art or Mixed Media tab to limit the listings; otherwise, you will have to plow through lots of back magazine issues. Under the Art tab, look at 600 Watercolor Mixes: Washes, Color Recipes and Techniques and Botanical Sketchbook. Under the Mixed Media tab, my pick is Art at the Speed of Life, which promises to help you create art on a daily basis.

Friday Finds: More Zentangles and Art:21

Carla Hedges and "Feathered Flowers"

Zentangles explosion
I'm experiencing pattern hypersensitivity. Everywhere I look I see Zentangles: the neighbor's trellis, the cut-glass decanter, a palm tree's trunk, even the wallpaper in my powder room (never got around to stripping that; just hoping now for wallpaper to come back in style).

Here are a few Zentangle artworks I will share. The first is Carla Hedges' "Feathered Flowers" that I mentioned in last week's post. She will be featured in the June issue of Bloomington Watercolor Society's Brushstrokes.

I stumbled across the second one this morning while checking my blog feed. The headline, not the art, is what drew me in: "Balancing roles of artist and mother" by guest columnist Sandhya Manne. When I clicked on it, the artwork appeared. Go to http://www.artbizblog.com/2011/05/artist-mother.html .

Art:21 Must-see TV from PBS online
Since seeing the John Marin exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in April, I have been thinking about realism and abstraction. And that has led me into an exploration of more contemporary themes and works.

Art:21, a PBS series about contemporary visual arts, is now available online at http://www.pbs.org/art21/index.html . The site offers not only 20 full episodes but also slideshows of more than 2,800 images, educator's guides and online lesson library. This Web site was a hold on me for the next few months!

And remember that PBS is public funded television, so donate through your local station. In Bloomington that's WTIU and the link is http://www.indiana.edu/~radiotv/wtiu/support.html . (Full disclosure: WTIU is sort of the "family business": my husband is executive director, but I would tell you to support WTIU even if I weren't married to him.)

Friday Finds: Out with the old; In with the new

Spring cleaning: Out with the old

I confess to not doing as much spring cleaning as is needed. However, I have cleaned up my palette and, thanks to my friend Carol Rhodes, Aureolin got the old heave-ho! That’s right. I scraped the old paint out of the palette and even tossed the brand new tube of Aureolin in the trash.

Those of you who have taken my classes recognize the paint as one of the paints I’ve listed as a must have. How did it lose favor so quickly?

I had noticed that the pigment took on a brownish cast when left on my palette for very long. When Carol told me she had read that Aureolin also turns brown in paintings, I took action. To read more, go to http://www.hilarypage.com/#page7.

According to Hilary, the best substitutes are paints listed as PY175: Winsor & Newton’s Winsor Lemon, MaimeriBlu’s Permanent Yellow Lemon, Schmincke’s Chrome Yellow Lemon and Daniel Smith’s Lemon Yellow.



My first (and second) Zentangles


In with the new: Zentangles

Last week I was fascinated by a painting of Carla Hedges that is currently hanging in the Waldron’s Flashlight Gallery. The intricate design intrigued me, and because I couldn’t find Carla I asked Linda Meyer-Wright about it. (Carla and I have both taken classes taught by Linda, a mixed media artist.)

Linda described the painting as a Zentangle, explaining this has taken on almost a cult status with a following, its own language and even disputes about whether the method is an art form or a doodle. She referred me to http://www.zentangle.com, where I have spent some time reading through its archive of newsletters.

I’ve been playing with some of the Zentangle patterns on Artist Trading Cards and have found the experience to be almost meditative.

The blue card is my first Zentangle attempt; the pattern is called OOF (Out Of Focus) and was created by Zentangle co-creator Rick Roberts after visiting New York City’s Cloisters, which houses the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval collection. On the yellow card I experimented with “a string,” Zentangle-speak for a free-form line that subdivides working space, and multiple Zentangle patterns.

Go to the Web site, but be prepared to “lose yourself” in the Zentangle world for a while.

Made it into the Sunday paper

Sunday HT featured Creative Aging shows in B-town this week, and the article mentioned me -- without listing my age. Glad to dodge that bullet!

http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2011/05/07/scene.qp-0389994.sto

Even better news: The painting sold!