Pop-Up Gallery show this week

A couple of friends and I were so frustrated with existing art collaboratives – either too expensive or too backward looking or too many folk with boring work – that we thought we’d do our own!  So we rented a gallery for this next weekend: Fri Nov 30-Sun Dec 2.  And then we had a lot of fun thinking whom we could invite to join us.  We wanted a mix of different mediums and all of them of great quality.  We also wanted to have folk that don’t usually show their work so there would be a fresh flavour to the show.  We’ve even hired a musician – no canned musack for us!!  Here’s our announcement!

Having got this amazing group together and the gallery and all the other arrangements, I’ve been hustling to matt or frame up watercolors and finish quilts ready to show.  Since Athens,GA  is one of the monetarily poorest places in the nation – despite being incredibly rich in talented folk, education, learning and things to do – it’s important to keep prices low.  As you know quilts – even for the wall! – take an incredibly long time to make, so I’ve been doing some cropping….both of the paintings and the quilts.  Looking for little gems!

 

I made a quilt some time ago that I never really felt worked – the composition was very awkward as you can see…plus I’d done one very similar which was much better.

So time to get out the rotary cutter!  and I created two little fellows from this big overloaded camelephanteater….

I like them better…more mystery, more abstracted and I’ve got rid of the distracting top heavy bright shapes…I’d noticed when cropping watercolors how I could significantly improve them by doing so, so it makes a lot of sense to do the same thing with quilts.  I’ll take a look at these as they hang on the wall in the gallery (!) and I think I’ll be coming home afterwards looking for many more to cut up!  After all why keep the whole thing when not all of it is working – cut to the good bits I reckon!

And here are some of the watercolors – just local scenes or places I’ve been on my travels ….

 

this was from a photo I took when I was out hiking in the woods with my photography friends…I love photos of people really engaged in doing something.

 

I see this house on my walk every day…it’s a very nice shape especially with the trees providing contrast…I painted it first without the car…but it was obviously lacking something there…the white shapes really needed to continue toward the right hand edge, so I was glad that Rita nearly always has her van parked there on the driveway!

 

I taught at Hudson River Valley Inn a couple of autumns back; there is a lovely park just up the hill from the inn with great views.  I was able to sit and sketch as well as take photographs, and then made the painting later when I got back home.

 

 

I’m in a plein aire group started by a wonderful artist couple that live at the end of our street…they go out scouting for great local sites and were able to find this gorgeous field of sunflowers!  And they were all looking at us (the flowers that is!!)  What a beautiful day we had ..in amongst the flowers.

 

Sometimes we stay in Bob’s garden to paint, they have a very nice little gazebo tucked under the tall pines so prevalent down here in the south….

 

 

and down the street the other way, is a garden with a central lawn that always catches the sunlight in the early morning – love those glowing little sunlit magical areas!

So – if you’re in town!  Do come see the show.  And if you’re not – consider mounting your own show; many galleries are so desperate for revenue I think they’d be happy to rent to you between their major shows.

I’ll report back on how it all went!  If you have been, thanks for reading!   Elizabeth