Sheila M. Evans

As an artist, I talk to a lot of people about my work, especially at festivals. And I get asked a lot of questions. Many of them I hear over and over again. Some are questions such as, “why do you look tired?” or “do you really like leaves?”. These are not the questions I will be addressing here. Luckily, even more often I am asked really good questions about my medium and how it works. So, I decided to put together some relatively quick (for me) answers and post them on a new page, Pastel FAQs. For example:

1. What is pastel?
Pastel is a dry drawing medium, created by mixing pure powdered pigments with a minimal amount of binder and water, rolling it into a stick form, and allowing it to dry. The pigments used are the same pigments used to create all painting media, but the pastel form allows the pigments to appear closest to their original color. There is an enormous variety of pastel available on the market today, ranging from inexpensive, student-grade, chalk-like pastels to handmade, buttery, pigment-rich—and expensive—professional lines.

This one goes to eleven, so for the remaining ten Q and As, go here. Enjoy!

There are many artists out there who are much smarter than I am. They take their completed artwork to something called a “Professional Framer,” and pick it up framed and ready to sell. I’ve heard of these creatures, these framers, working in frame shops, framing artwork for a living. I know they exist. I’ve even dreamed of hiring one. Trouble is, I’ve never thought that I could afford to have my artwork framed this way, so I have always done it myself.

I’ve changed the way I do it over time. I’ve learned to buy custom frames at wholesale, and graduated from cutting my own mats to ordering them pre-cut (once I figured out that it wasn’t that much more money, after I’ve screwed up a few mats). I had my glass cut by the frame wholesaler, too. I had dialed in a pretty efficient, cost-effective system for myself. Then, I had the brilliant idea that I should upgrade my framing. Read more

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.

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.

Nothing fancy to report here—just spending some time in my studio actually PAINTING! This week I finished six new Teacup Oils to (almost) replace the ones I sold at Artfest. I have promised myself that this will be the last batch this year! Once they’re gone, they’re gone, until next season. Then, it was over to the pastel side to paint Springdance (left). This piece was actually inspired by one of the Teacup oils. I came up with the idea for it and liked the sketch so much I tried a variation in a small pastel, then went on to make the little cubular oil piece, then worked the small pastel idea into a large piece. Whew!

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!

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. Read more

This post falls in sort of a “note to self” category. But I thought it might be useful to someone else as well, and hey, here is as good a place as any to save my notes.

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. Read more