Sheila M. Evans

Art in the High Desert starts Friday! I’m so looking forward to this small, beautiful, and beautifully-juried show. If you’re in the Bend, Oregon area, please stop by!

Art in the High Desert

When: August 27 – 29, 2010
Where: The Shops at the Old Mill, 661 Powerhouse Drive, Bend, OR
Hours: Friday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m, Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils
Booth #14-15

 Art and Glass Fest at Arbor Crest is this weekend. I’ll be in my usual spot right by the entrance, with some new work in both oil and pastel, plus a few “classics” for a change of scenery (I spend a lot of time looking at my paintings all summer!)

Arbor Crest is a beautiful winery, and the weekend promises to be beautiful as well. I hope to see you there!

Art & Glass Fest at Arbor Crest
When: August 21-22, 2010
Where: Arbor Crest Wine Cellars, 4705 N Fruit Hill Rd, Spokane, WA
Hours: Saturday – Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils

So that’s it for Sun Valley. As always it was beautiful, fun and a bit sleepy.

Luckily it was a bit better for me than last year, when I bought a double booth space and seriously regretted it. This year I decided to minimize costs and make the most of a single space by going up. I extended the tent, and finally put to use the extension walls I bought from another artist at this very show.

Problem was, I bought the walls so long ago I didn’t remember exactly what came with them. More to the point, I forgot. I quickly realized as I went to put up the first extension that a crucial piece of hardware was missing. We looked in the box, and found a single item rolling around the bottom—a steel pin with a ridge around the middle. Unfortunately, I needed eight. At that moment I could picture them, in their little case on a shelf in our basement, ten hours northwest.

There was NO WAY I was going to have gone to all the trouble to raise the tent and not use those walls, so we set off to find a replacement in a town without a hardware store. My husband Paul was less than thrilled about this. It turned out to be with good reason.

After a frustrating time looking through densely crowded aisles, he finally spotted some turnbuckles at the local drug/hardware/variety store that appeared to be about the circumference of our pin, except with a hexagonal profile. Thinking the ridges might make the turnbuckles a bit too big, he picked up a file to take off any extra material. I thought they would fit just fine as-is but bought the file, just in case. TWO HOURS of “just in case” later Paul finally finished filing the ridges off of seven, much-tougher-than-they-looked aluminum tubes. The walls went up.

And after that very long, hot and trying setup, Paul had the grace to tell me the booth looked “awesome.” Thank you, Paul. Your patience is epic.

p.s.

Later that day we learned that as much as our setup sucked, it could have been worse. Our friend Jody, a jeweler, realized halfway through setup that she had forgotten a crucial part of her display. She actually drove home to get it before the show opened the next morning—four hours each direction. What a life.

Friday the 13th kicks off the 2010 Sun Valley Center Arts and Crafts Festival! This is one of my longest-running art fair traditions: it will be my fifth consecutive year in the show. I am so excited!

I have to admit last year was a little rough to say the least. The area appeared to be hit hard by the economy, and between that and the unusual stormy weather, attendance was way down. As were my sales. Upon leaving I swore I would skip this year. But, as the jury deadline drew near, suddenly I could only remember how much fun the show is and how much I love the scenery, and the KB burritos, and the people running the show, and the other artist regulars. So much for that!

(OK, I’m having a major deja vu right now. I must be repeating myself from an earlier post. But hey. This is my Sun Valley story at the moment.)

So beyond all the drama previously mentioned, I’ll be showing pastels and oils again, including some new work such as Raintree Study No.3, above. I’ll also be debuting a taller tent, since I can’t stop messing with my display. My original set of Pro Panels included some wall extensions and I realized that with my latest redesign I can actually use them, so I’ll be giving that a spin. My long-suffering booth and I hope to see you there!

If you plan to go, here’s the pertinent info:

Sun Valley Center Arts and Crafts Festival
When: August 13- 15, 2010
Where: Atkinson Park, 900 3rd Ave., Ketchum, ID
Hours: Friday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m., Sunday 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils
Booth #G-5

The Tinman Gallery‘s Alice in wonderland Invitational opens tomorrow night. My pastel, Why Not (left) will appear along with the Alice-inspired work of over 40 well-known regional artists.

The opening reception starts Friday July 30th at 5:00 and goes on until 9:00 p.m. The show itself stays up through August 21.

The Tinman is located in Spokane’s historic Garland district at 811 W Garland Ave. Regular business hours are 10-6, Monday-Saturday.

When an artist spends as much time online as I do, they tend to accumulate a lot of unsolicited offers. Apply to this show, pay for space on that online gallery, get great deals on framing, have your art reproduced by our company! Most of these emails (many of which are scams) are quickly “filed” and forgotten. But not always.

A few months ago I received an email in near-perfect English from someone claiming to be a representative of a French art magazine. She had seen my art online and wanted the option of posting my artwork in the “Portfolio” section of their website. At least, that was my understanding. I was given a deadline to send hi-res images to be considered for publication.

Requests for hi-res art images out of the blue can be a little unnerving. Is it legit, or is someone planning to send my artwork to be knocked off in China? Why hi-res if the images are being posted on the website? This looked real enough, with a link to the French art magazine Pratique des Arts. Of course it’s not hard to link to something in an email—it proves nothing.

I pretty much forgot about it until the submission deadline, when another email asked if I was still interested. I decided to take a chance; I sent  the images. And heard nothing. A few months went by and I forgot about it again until some random Tuesday brought a fleeting thought of the French art website. Oddly, that afternoon I received one more email, asking where to send a contributor’s copy. Now I was really confused. I thought the images were to be posted in some minor online supplement. Whatever. I forgot about it again.

Arriving home from the Bellevue show yesterday, I opened the mailbox to find a large envelope from France containing an absolutely gorgeous art magazine, unreadable to me but stunning, with amazing pastel work from a collection of international artists. There were Dewfall and Medusa No.2, representing the U.S. on the first two pages of the “Pastellistes du Monde” section. Turning the page I found a pastel by the amazing Sally Strand. Elsewhere a spread on the celebrated Alan Flattman. Here was my work in the company of these incredible artists and an apparent international who’s who of pastel. What a thrill! All for something I very nearly didn’t do. Maybe a little trust isn’t so bad once in a while.

The Bellevue Artsfair starts this Friday and I couldn’t be happier. It’s been a long break between shows for summer, so I’m anxious to get back. And Bellevue is one of the best!

This year I’m thrilled to be showing my oil paintings along with my pastels for the first time in Bellevue. And I will have a lot of them after I take down the Metamorphosis show from the Kress Gallery on Wednesday. Show weeks are always busy, but this is especially crazy… after spending today framing and delivering my Alice in Wonderland piece to the Tinman Gallery, I have to take down shows at Pacific Garden Design tomorrow and the Kress on Wednesday before loading the car for the show. Plus the usual million little pre-show details like price tags and artwork lists. And covering my entire studio in plastic so my upstairs neighbor can sand his floors.

SO. Anyway. If you’re in the Seattle/Bellevue area this Friday-Saturday-Sunday, come by the Artsfair! It’s an amazing show and I will have more new and different work than ever before. The details:

Bellevue Arts Museum ArtsFair
When: July 23 – 25, 2010
Where: Bellevue Square parking garage, 510 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA
Hours: Friday – Saturday, 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m., Sunday 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils
Booth # J-08