Sheila M. Evans

It seems that it’s been a while since I’ve posted some new artwork. So I present my latest pastel, Orion. Orion is named for a satin-winged Costa Rican butterfly, and represents a serious effort to stop getting sidetracked with all this boothiness and paint something already!

I set up for my first show of the season four weeks from today, and am suddenly panicking that I don’t have enough pastels. With several days of framing left to do, I have maybe three actual weeks left to paint. How on earth did that happen?

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What else could I possibly need to do, I believe I asked at the end of my last post about my art fair setup. Ha. Well, there were just a few things.

As expected, I did have to do some fiddling with the walls. Since I use wooden pieces at the tops of the panels, I realized I would need to make more in order to fill a double booth. Happily, I devised a method of using the old pieces from my original setup which would save money, shop time, staining and lumber. Happily, that is, until I actually looked at the original top rails and realized they were narrower than the new ones and therefore unusable.

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I’ve had a lot going on lately dealing with new shows filling the schedule, working with my booth setup, etc. But now that I’m doing all these shows, I think I should consider making some new artwork to hang on my ever-growing collection of display walls. Luckily for my pastel supply, we should be getting a break in the perfect weather after today and I just might be able to tear myself from the back yard and go paint.

I’ve already got a start with the pastel study shown here, Waiting Wings. I think I will make a large pastel version of the image, then play some more with painting this potted hydrangea I bought a few months ago. After reaching the brink of death half a dozen times or so, it is just getting interesting. And I’m enjoying having some new and different imagery for my pastels. Should be almost as fun as staining naugahyde.

I’ll explain later.

So I lied. I said I wouldn’t add any more shows to my summer fair schedule, then I went the other way. Last year I tried a little two-day show at Arbor Crest Wine Cellars here in Spokane, and had a great time doing it. It happened to fall on the same weekend as the first Art in the High Desert. So, I thought if I managed to apply to A. in the H.D. this year, I would have to give up the Arbor Crest show. Turns out otherwise—Arbor Crest is the weekend before, so I can do both. This means that I will now be doing shows three weekends in a row, then one weekend off, then another three in a row, but I am trying not to think about that too much.

By the way, if you are thinking of attending Art & Glass Fest, the good news is that it is held on the grounds of a beautiful winery atop a hill overlooking the Spokane River. The bad news (or maybe not) is that attendance is therefore limited to those 21 and over.

At last! I just received, happily, an acceptance to Art in the High Desert, and with it, the final entry on my schedule. Art in the High Desert is a new show, in its second year for 2009. It takes place in Bend, Oregon, in a beautiful location along the banks of a stream across from the Shops at the Old Mill. I know the location is beautiful because we actually went to Bend and scouted it on the way back from Sausalito last year. I had heard about the show many months before its inaugural jury, and very much wanted to apply for the first year of the show. The only problem was, I didn’t know what it was going to be called. So when the show appeared on the jury site, I missed it, only learning its name a few months after the jurying was done.

Several people at Sausalito last year had been in Art in the High Desert and were very impressed, especially for a show in its first year. This year I was NOT going to miss out again. I applied the day the applications became available. And it paid off—I was accepted in both Drawing and Painting. My luck seems to have improved over time with the painting category, going from rejections to wait lists to acceptances in a tidy progression.

On that subject, I seem to remember early in this blog project that I promised to post the good and the bad about this business. So in that spirit, I am posting my complete show results. Read on to see how I did.

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One more show is on the schedule, and it’s a good one! As my friend Vicky said, hey, it’s Sausalito, baby! A great, big, fun show, and annual excuse to make a road trip to my home state. This year I’ll be taking oil paintings along with my pastels, so it seemed appropriate to include one of my oils of the hydrangeas near the show in this post. Maybe their owner will come through my booth and recognize them…

There’s so much to love about Sausalito. Great customers, beautiful setting, easy setup, and a fantastic party on Friday night. This will be my third year at the show. The first year, we stayed at a fun older hotel (La Luna) right across the Golden Gate Bridge on Lombard Street. We did all the touristy things, checking out the wharf, shopping, everything. Last year we went a bit more practical, bidding on a hotel on Priceline, and staying north of the bridge to save money on the hotel and bridge toll. Staying in San Rafael definitely had its benefits beyond the practical—the second night we found an Indian restaurant so amazing, we went back every night afterward. I am already drooling a little bit thinking about the Paneer Tikka Masala I discovered our last night in town. And, we found a fantastic eco-friendly mattress store where we replaced our bedding (an anniversary gift to ourselves).

In fact, it was our first year at Sausalito when Paul and I got married. After the show we drove to Tahoe, met all of our parents and had a little wedding at one of the chapels. Then the six of us ran around town, eating, drinking and playing slots. It was seriously one of the most fun nights I can remember. This year, we’ll celebrate our second anniversary at the show. I hope we can think of someplace good to eat dinner afterward.

I know, I know, how many times can I seriously make a news item out of Sun Valley? It’s been on the schedule for eight months already. But that was for pastels. I just found out I will be bringing both pastels and oils to Sun Valley this year. Hooray!

As for part two of my latest art fair news post, I will once again be appearing at Artfest here in Spokane. (I’ll have both mediums with me here as well.) Artfest is the one that started it all for me. It was my first and only fair the year I started down this road, and it was the one that I had visited year after year wishing I could find some way to exhibit. When I first started attending the show as a guest, I saw very little 2-D art. It was mostly fine crafts, photography, and maybe a few paintings here and there. Even people I knew as painters usually showed some other body of work. 

I really, really wanted to be in an art fair. I wanted to make a display, set up a tent, be outside, and sell my work. But what work?

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I’m back in the studio after a week spent on other projects, and it feels good! Not that my overall state of mind wasn’t vastly improved by my recent good news from Park City (see below), but I am happy to be painting. For my latest small pastel, Sun and Fog Study, my goal was to work out a palette that combines my neutral grays with the lush golden floral series I’ve started. Happily, I think I got it. The colors came together fairly easily and I’m looking forward to diving in to a final, very large pastel version of the image. Which I will do about as soon as I am done posting this.

It’s a good thing I have a piece I really want to paint. Spokane has finally gotten its Spring, and it is sunny and gorgeous outside. To add to the temptation, my new extension tent just arrived, and it is the perfect day to go outside and set it up. No! Must… wait… for… weekend! Back to the studio!