Uff dah! It's been a while since I updated my blog (shamefully bad artist, I know), but I've been very busy during these first months of 2015.
The first thing that I want to share with you is that I bought a new cargo van for my summer art shows. Believe it or not, I've done the past decade of art shows in a trusty Honda Odyssey mini van, affectionately known as The Clown Car of Art and / or The Marshmallow due to its whiteness. I always knew that if there was just one spare cubic inch of space on my way to an art show, then I had to be forgetting something. And there were plenty of times when I forgot things, such as the time when I left all of my packing materials in our garage on my way to an art show in Bethesda, Maryland a couple of years ago.
{sigh}
Anyways, I took the plunge two weeks ago and purchased a dedicated cargo van. I made this decision for a variety of reasons, not least of which were that I was sick of crawling around on my hands and knees and that I really couldn't carry all of the inventory and materials that I needed in order to do out-of-state shows. Indeed, during my first show last year in Greenville, South Carolina, a freak thunderstorm came up out of nowhere and brought 50-mph wind gusts with it. I nearly lost my entire booth and all of my artwork to kick off the season because I didn't have adequate weight to keep things anchored down. These are the perils of outdoor art shows, but I'm looking forward to another decade of adventures once I get my cargo van. Woo hoo!
Visiting Hyner Run State Park in central Pennsylvania earlier this month.
The second item that I want to share with you is that I'm starting on a new project here in 2015: Visiting every single one of Pennsylvania's 120 state parks. The goal, of course, will be to create a landscape painting from each one. I'm off to a slow start thanks to the brutally cold and snowy winter that we had this season, but a couple of weeks ago I got to a new location, the gorgeous Hyner Run State Park in Clinton County, about an hour and a half from our home. By virtue of living in Centre County, I figure I can take advantage of our central location and explore the state's wonderful locations from my home base. I anticipate that this project will take me many years to complete, but with my trusty canine companions, Maple and Marlon, it will be an enjoyable adventure. Besides, as I travel to various art shows, I'm usually within reach of a park, so why not double dip while traveling?
Watch for new landscape works from these beautiful locations in the coming months (and years) as I patiently tick each location off of my list. I have about 10 under my belt so far...Only 110 more to go!
