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

And now for something else completely different… an Alice-in-Wonderland-inspired piece titled Why Not? which I’ve just completed for the Tinman Gallery‘s second annual Oz-vitational. Huh? Well, Year One was an Oz-vitational. This year all of the artwork will be inspired by the childrens’ classic, Alice in Wonderland. (Much to the relief of the artists who participated in Year One, I’m sure. Fresh inspiration!)

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had never read Alice in Wonderland nor even seen a movie version until receiving this assignment. I tried both several times as a child and never quite made it through for one reason or another. Luckily for me, a fresh movie came out on DVD just in time for my research. Better still, this particular movie had a CGI Tweedledum and Tweeedledee played by/modeled after the hilarious Matt Lucas, from the seriously funny Little Britain USA.

Anyway, back to my point if I had one. I did stop laughing just long enough to catch an approximately four-second reference to Alice and the Red Queen painting white roses red, and there was my idea. Roses dripping with shiny red paint, forming the shape of the Red Queen’s heart surrounded by white roses yet to be painted. This piece and “Alice” works by many wonderful artists will be available for purchase at the show.

The Alice in Wonderland Invitational runs from July 30 through August 21. Opening reception is from 5 – 9 p.m. Friday, August 30.

The Tinman Gallery is located in Spokane’s historic Garland District at 811 West Garland Avenue.

Next week I plan to revisit my Raintree sketches in oil. I’m curious to see how they will turn out. The little pastel sketches reminded me of a combination of a 1940s barkcloth print and my older bunchgrass pieces–which I’ve never painted in oil. Here’s looking forward to next week and a new challenge!

Despite more than the normal amount of the Traditional Artfest Rain, Artfest was a great weekend. Friday (the rainiest day) gave artists a chance to catch up with one another. At length. But Saturday and Sunday brought sun and crowds! Thanks to all my customers and friends who support my art habit. Also a big thanks to the Artfest jurors, who honored me with the Tinman Gallery 2-D Merit Award. So nice to know I will be returning to a show that is clearly on the upswing. Which brings me to my last big thank you, again to the jurors, who picked a high-quality, even show.

But, Artfest is over and it’s great to get back to the studio! I’ve missed it lately, since some soundproofing has been going on with the ceiling and everything has been piled up under plastic sheets. But with almost two months until my next show, it was time to put the construction on hold and make the studio back into a studio again.

Art fair season can really mess with creative energy, as getting outside and fiddling with the booth plays perfectly into spring fever. On the flip side, getting to the shows and actually selling some art is the best motivator I know to go paint. This week I played with an idea I’ve had for a while now, resulting in the two “Raintree” pastels pictured above. They will serve as studies for oil paintings which will, hopefully, be ready in time for Sun Valley.

And, the idea of stopping at twenty-four Teacup Oils is out the window. The Teacup Oils have been to exactly one show and I am already down NINE! So six more mini-canvases are stretched, gessoed and waiting for paint and tea-licious titles. Barely back in the studio and there’s more on my plate than I can probably finish before Bellevue. All or nothing… that’s the art life.

p.s. Many of the paintings from my booth at Artfest plus a few more are on display at Pacific Garden Design through mid-July. PGD is open to the public, but if you plan to go, give them a call first to be sure someone is there! It’s a beautiful space with amazing pots for sale (and garden design, of course).

The Kress Gallery, Riverpark Square, Spokane, Washington

Metamorphosis is my premier exhibition to feature oil paintings exclusively. The title represents both a recurring theme in the work—the transformation of leaves into winged “creatures”—and my own growth as an artist through the exploration of a different medium.

For purchase or other information contact Tammy Gabbert at the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture.

Metamorphosis (works in oil) runs May 7 through July 20, 2010

After last year I was absolutely done with my art fair booth. No more changes. Ha.

As always on the long trip back from Sausalito last year, Paul and I, sick of tedious setups and tear-downs, discussed how we could make things easier. Of course it would be easiest to just skip all the extra stuff I’ve added, set up the Pro Panels and be done with it. But if you have read my previous stories (rants? storants?) about how all of that came to be, you may understand that at this point I am kind of attached to the look.

So how, without sacrificing the basic feel of the booth, to make things easier? Well, we came up with a plan. And although this plan will admittedly make life easier in future, it did definitely NOT make my life easier the past few weeks.

First order of business was to redesign the naugahyde “baseboards.” The current ones were frankly a giant pain in the ass to unpack, wrap on the walls, then unwrap and re-pack for every show. Worse yet, despite all my loving care and handmade individual flannel bags (yes really), they were starting to look pretty bad. The stain that I spent weeks putting on over the past few years was, predictably, coming off.

 I think it was Paul who came up with the idea to make one permanent “baseboard” per wall that stayed on at all times—brilliant! So, back to the upholstery store for about a mile of new, copper naugahyde that DID NOT NEED TO BE STAINED. Yay. Then I had only to cut then sew about 300 (really maybe 16) loops of the stuff, pop them on the bottoms of the walls, and hot glue foam inside to keep them from sagging. Oh, then go back to the upholstery store for 15 yards of bungee cord to keep them from sliding down from the weight of the foam. And… six months later… Done! (OK, so the breakdown on that was actually 5-1/2 months of procrastination and maybe two weeks of actual work. But still.)

 Then, on to the wooden top rails. They looked pretty nice and were in good shape, but had problems of their own. They were unwieldy to transport, and my original design severely limited wall arrangement options. Every year I made more and more rails to gain a few more possible booth layouts, until eventually at each show we ended up storing almost as many as we used. They needed to be modular, to be one-size-fits-all. I took on this problem, and after a few days came up with a design inspired by a combination of Greene and Greene’s Gamble House stairwell and Tinkertoys.

The new design had one separate top rail for each wall, all the same, all interchangeable. Various simple connectors—straight, corner, and end pieces—would hold everything together. The scary part: the new rails would be made from the old ones. After that first chop there would be no turning back. Terrified, I procrastinated even longer than for the baseboards. But with a show just a few weeks away I was out of time. Luckily, after a week or so more of cutting, routing, drilling, sanding and staining, I now have a simple lightweight system that looks surprisingly not so different from the original. And as a special bonus, I still have all of my fingers! Hooray!

Finally, Major Booth Revision Number Three is complete. Today I took advantage of my trial run to take some booth photos for next year’s show entries (see top of this post). So that’s it then. No more booth revisions. No “Evolution Part Four.” That’s a promise to me.

Want more? Read Evolution of an Art Fair Booth Part 1 and Part 2.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve stretched no fewer than twenty four of my 6″ mini canvases. Needless to say, I’ve got it dialed in fairly well by now. But I realized that I probably have all the tiny canvases that I need (or have time to paint) this year. And I also realized that by next year I might have absolutely no idea how I did them, because I’m like that. Like what, you ask? Worrying? Forgetful? Mildly obsessive? Yes.

So without further ado, here are my notes on stretching tiny gallery wrap canvases. Or any gallery wrap canvases, if you use bigger stuff.

I started with a 6″ x 6″ x 2″ deep canvas stretcher (I have them made by a framing wholesaler), and an 18″ square of canvas from which 5-1/4″ squares have been removed at the corners. When the stretcher is centered on the canvas this leaves about 5/8″ from the sides of the stretcher to the cut edges of the corners.

Once the canvas is centered, I pull up each side and place one staple in its center, on the back of the stretcher frame, being careful to stretch the fabric as tightly as possible from side to side. I pick a side and continue to staple all the way across. I then repeat this on the opposite side, again stretching the canvas as tightly as possible. After stretching two opposite sides, I then fold the sides of those flaps around the frame and place a staple in each one (4 staples total). This keeps the fabric flat as you fold over the remaining two sides.

After completing the first two sides, I trim the fabric on the stapled edges to about 3/4″ from the staples to reduce the bulk on the back of the canvas. After this is done I pinch together excess fabric at each corner (starting at least 1/4″ away from the frame) and trim it off.

After this is done it is time to staple the last two sides. I fold up the canvas flaps, using the edge of my scissors to tuck the corner in tightly as I fold the flap under. The edge of the folded flap should run neatly along the corner edge of the frame. After folding each edge, I pull the canvas tight and staple the rest of the side to the folded corners.

Almost done! Once the sides are completely stapled, I have only to trim the excess fabric near the staples… and give the folded fabric at the corners a few good taps with my hammer to “iron” them flat. Voila! The canvases are ready for gesso.

Note: you may have noticed in the photo I am wearing gloves. I am not just wearing gloves, I am wearing gloves over other gloves with a band-aid on my middle left top knuckle. If you stretch more than a canvas or two in a day, you will understand why.

Opening Reception Friday, May 7, 5 – 8 p.m.

The Kress Gallery, Riverpark Square, Spokane, Washington
Music by Haywire (Don Thomsen and Dan Black)
Catered by Twigs

I’m putting the last touches on paintings for Metamorphosis, my show at the Kress Gallery in downtown Spokane. I’ve been painting for this show for so long, I can hardly believe it’s almost here! Metamorphosis is my first time to exhibit oil paintings exclusively, and it will feature some of my most ambitious work to date. I’m so excited to see it go up. I’ve even hired a swing duo, Haywire, featuring Don Thomsen and Dan Black, to play at the reception. I hope to see you there!

Metamorphosis (works in oil) runs May 7 through July 18, 2010