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.

I found a new frame style that is similar to my previous mahogany stained wood, but wider and more substantial. It costs more but it is elegant and sturdy and worth it. But the biggest change by far has been—glass. After a particularly glare-y show at Sun Valley last year, one where I appeared to be selling a boothful of mirrors rather than pastels, I bit the bullet and switched to Anti-Reflective Glass. Anti-Reflective Glass is amazing, it makes the work look as if it is not behind glass at all. But while its cost alone seems to warrant the capitalization, it is so much more than expensive! It is also ever so delicate. And hard to clean. So much so that my wholesalers aren’t supposed to cut it, but instead sell it by the box. Which brings me to why I am questioning my sanity and dreaming of Professional Framers.

Since I have to buy the glass uncut by the box, I have by necessity taken on the job of cutting it myself. Given my personal history, this should really be no big deal. I spent my early formative years (we’re talking, two, maybe three years old) in a glass shop cutting scraps of glass with a hand-held cutter for entertainment while my glazier dad ran his business. My mom was climbing around on glass trucks basically until I popped out of her and she had to run to the hospital to finish the delivery on her lunch break. So you would think I had this in my blood! Cutting glass, no problem! Do it in my sleep! But after having a cut go sideways on a $50 piece of glass this summer, I am filled with therapy-worthy anxiety over glass.

I bought a giant wall-hung glass cutter to make the job easier (thanks to my wholesalers who found a used one for me almost instantly and at a very reasonable price). This should have been comforting but instead it, too,  intimidated me… I’d never used one before and here I was staring at it alongside a $200 box of glass. Three sheets per box. I thought, hey, my dad can help! He must have used one of these before, since he had a glass shop. Not so much. Turns out he cut giant sheets of commercial plate glass BY HAND with a long board and one of those little green-handled cutters. He then proceeded to cut several small pieces of my troublesome coated glass by doing little more than look at it funny, like some mythical character from Dune. Looks like I’m on my own with the wall-mount contraption.

In the end, I pretty much figured out the cutter. It cuts really well. And after I turned several large, expensive sheets of glass into small, more expensive sheets of glass, I even figured out that I have to run the glass through the cutter with paper to keep the coating from scratching. So I guess this is it, my new system. I’m less anxious now—slightly. The new frames look really good, and the glass just disappears. But after a very stressful week of framing for a show, I can’t help but wonder what it would have cost to hire a framer instead. I kind of think I should find out so I will feel better about all the money I’m saving. Or am I?

(Above: Bohemia, ©2011. Pastel, 8″ x 24″. It will be on display along with several other new works at the private Spokane Club starting this Wednesday, February 2nd. If you happen to be a member, please check it out.)

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.

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.

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.