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A GRANT!

1/25/2023

 
I am delighted to announce that I have been selected as part of a 12-artist cohort to receive a Capacity Building Grants from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod and MassMoCA through their Assets for Artists program!  You can click HERE for more information about the Cape Cod cohort artists on the MassMoCA website, and HERE to read the press release from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.  The program connects artists with financial, educational, and networking support in developing concrete plans to help them create art practices that are sustainable over the long term.  This includes workshops, meet-ups, mentoring, and more.  I am excited, and so grateful to all three organizations.  Thank you so much for this opportunity!

If you are an artist in Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts and not in the grant program, you can still take advantage of many of the resources available to the cohort group.  For a schedule of free workshops hosted by Mass MocA, click HERE.  I attended the workshop led by sculptor Laura Baring-Gould last week, and can honestly say it's one of the best workshops I've ever taken.  Laura was massively supportive, and the content was well organized, insightful, and informative.  For information about AFCC and its various programs, click HERE.  For more information about Mass MoCA's Assets for Artists Program, click HERE.

I am looking forward to meeting all my fellow grantees soon, and taking advantage of all the great resources in the program!
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Me, looking artist-like in the image I chose for my cohort bio.

HOLIDAY BAZAAR

10/12/2022

 
Upcoming event alert!  I will be selling cards, stickers, small prints, and t-shirts featuring my work at the annual Holiday Bazaar at the Church of the Holy Spirit on Saturday, November 5th from 9 a.m.- 2 p.m.  You'll find me in there along with a passel of other local artists & artisans with our paintings, cards, dolls, fiber art, glass art, jewelry, ornaments, photography, pottery, stone art, watercolors, wood art and Kimball Guild Crafts (hammered aluminum jewelry and other items).  There will also be costume and estate jewelry and gently used books for sale, and a lunch room from 11:30-1:30 p.m.. It will be my first time participating in this event, but I am told it is a local favorite.  Hope to see you there!  

Also!  The new winter show at the Galley West Art Gallery, on the Holy Spirit campus, will be opening the same day.  I do not have work in the show this time, but do please go see the work of the featured artists!  It will be a show of small works, quite suitable for gifting.

P.S.: It's hard to believe the Holiday season is once again fast approaching, isn't it?
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GALLEY WEST SHOW

10/6/2022

 
Today I spent a pleasant rainy day volunteering at the Galley West Art Gallery in Orleans, MA, where my photography work is on display.  It is a lovely little community gallery on the campus of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, at Monument Road and Rte. 28.  Founded a year ago, it features the work of artists from the Lower and Outer Cape Cod towns of Brewster, Chatham, Harwich, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown.  The Gallery building is pretty awesome... the front half is part of an old tavern (circa 1829), and the back is the up-turned hull of the shipwreck Orissa, which washed up on Nauset beach in 1894 (after spending 37 years under water!).  For more on the history of the space, follow this link. 

So!  If you like art or old buildings, or both, and/or if you are an artist interested in exhibiting your work, stop by and see the gallery.  If you are the latter, keep an eye on the calls for art, and sign up for the mailing list.  You can find both on the GWAG website.
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Above: 1933 Vernon Smith mural in the rear 'Orissa' portion of the gallery.
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Above: The front 'Tavern' portion of the gallery, with my work at right, along with ceramics by Patricia Marti and Barbara Ravage, as well as landscapes rendered in pastels by Natalie Timoshin.
Left and below: Seeds & Stems, a series of my natural light photographs, on view at GWAG until October 29th.  
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SUMMER RE-CAP

9/15/2022

 

Hello all!  Just a little recap of the art-events of the summer as we head into autumn!  I was hard at work throughout preparing for or selling my wares at the Orleans Artist Cottages in Orleans, on Cape Cod.  I spent a week there over the Fourth of July, and then another one just a week or so ago over Labor Day.  Both were great!  I had fun spending time talking to all the folks browsing and buying, and was buoyed by a great group of fellow artist-vendors.  Thanks to you all for being such a supportive community, and to the Cottages staff for the opportunity to be there. 

​I really enjoyed talking art with both customers and artists, and had a great time drawing and giving free short drawing lessons to passers-by.  I really like this venue because it allows me to have conversations with all sorts of people about art.  I gave free drawing lessons and did drawing demonstrations while I was there in order to engage the community.  I use an exercise for both where I draw with various simple drawing tools taped to the ends of 3-ft sticks, and making a mess of marks, and then free associating and making the marks into something by adding color and tone and additional linework.  It is a fantastic exercise for breaking old habits, loosening up, making new kinds of marks (the foundation of drawing!), and generally breaking oneself out of perfectionism, tightness, and all of the other things that inhibit creativity.  Kids love it, as do people who think they cannot draw.  It's also a hit with art teachers and artists.  Try it... you'll like it!  At some point, I'd love to develop a workshop that uses these kinds of exercises to teach drawing and creative practice.
Photo of artist in a blue shirt and shorts in front of a display booth in an outdoor setting.
Me and my booth at the Orleans Artist Cottages over 2022 Labor Day week(end).
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A drawing I did during my Labor Day week(end) sale/show at the Cottages. Unlike the bird in the photo below, this one did not resolve into something completely recognizable. I chose to leave it ambiguous. Which is one of the things that is so great about art ... it can be whatever it darned well wants to be.
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My booth at the Orleans Artist Cottages over July 4th week(end).
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Browsers at the Cottages over Labor Day week(end).
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A drawing I did of an (imaginary) bird named Hieronymus during Labor Day week(end) at the Cottages.

SPRING - AWAKE - ARISE

3/17/2022

 
Howdy, all!  I am delighted to report that my work will be included in the spring show SPRING - AWAKE - ARISE at the Galley West Art Gallery in Orleans, MA!  The show opens on Saturday, March 26 and will run through Saturday, May 7th.  Galley West is on the Campus of the Church of the Holy Spirit, at the corner of Route 28 and Monument Road.  It is a "volunteer run community art gallery dedicated to displaying and selling art created by artists from the Lower and Outer Cape Cod towns of Brewster, Chatham, Harwich, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown."  Thanks so much to the lovely local artists who had the vision for this gallery and the hard work they have put in to make it a reality.  Please do stop by and see the show, everyone!  
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Clarence the rabbit will be at the show... won't you come, too?
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Galley West Art Gallery logo by Dan Joy.

HELLO, ORLEANS!

11/13/2021

 
Well, well, things are finally starting to brew here in my new home base, Cape Cod.  I am happy to report that you will now be able to  buy a selection of my art prints and greeting cards in person at the Sea Howl Bookshop in Orleans, MA.  This great little independent bookshop is located at 46 Main Street, right in the heart of things.  They offer a well-curated collection of books, plus beautiful puzzles and paper goods.  Whilst you are there, you can view an installation of paper birds that I made by hand.  

Also! I will be setting up my booth at the Orleans Artist Cottages Holiday Market on Thanksgiving weekend.  The event will feature art vendors, food and drink, music, and other entertainments. On Saturday, the Orleans Winterfest Candlelight Stroll will end at the Holiday Market.  I will be selling my full line of products, including cards, art prints, stickers, and t-shirts.  So come on down!  It should be a really lovely kick-off to the Christmas season.

Where: 15 Old Colony Way, Orleans, MA 
When: Saturday, November 27 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday, November 28 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
  
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NEW ADVENTURE AWAITS!

9/8/2020

 
Well boy oh boy, it's been quite an interesting year or two, and the adventure is about to continue.  If you've visited my shop page recently, you will find that all of the items are showing up as sold out.  Not so!  I still have items in stock, but they will be unavailable for a bit as I relocate from very near the Pacific Ocean to about as close to the Atlantic Ocean as a body can get without actually falling in!  Yes, it's goodbye to Oregon and hello to the great state of Massachusetts...

If you go back a few years to 
this blog post, you will see that I spent some time back then taking art workshops on Cape Cod, and poking around in the marshes here and suchlike.  Now, by golly, I have the opportunity to make the Cape my HQ, which is rather swell, don't you think so?  In doing so, I am humbly joining a long-established community of artists and nature enthusiasts, and am pretty excited about it.  There's much to be done on the logistics side, so I'll try to give an occasional update on the progress of the business move, but oh please do not be sore at me if I go silent again for a bit!  For now, here are a few pictures of my new environs.  It's an awfully beautiful spot, if I do say so.  

P.S.: For more on the monarch butterfly and milkweed story, visit my Instagram feed.  Perhaps I'll do a summary here at some point.  Super short version: we protected some milkweed here on the Cape this summer, and were justly rewarded with caterpillars and butterflies!  We are hopeful that the last generation of them is now off to Mexico!
Photo of Salt Pond in the Cape Cod National Seashore
Salt Pond, Cape Cod National Seashore
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Roadside roses, back in June...
Photo of a monarch butterfly on a milkweed (aesclepias tuberosa) blossom.
Backyard monarchs butterflies...

WILDFLOWER TIME AGAIN!

5/18/2018

 
Get ready!  This Sunday, May 20, it is time once again for the Mount Pisgah Wildflower Festival.  I'll be out there with my booth, selling prints, cards, and stickers of my artwork, and basking in the glory of spring.  I can't say enough about the magnificent and always interesting display of live wildflowers.  (For some photos of past events, see last year's blog post.)  It's a family friendly event, with nature walks, music, booths selling plants, art, nature books, and things to munch on.  It runs from 10 am - 5 pm.  Check out the link above for the full schedule.

I must say, it is so very beautiful this time of year, with all the flowers a flowering.  At last year's Wildflower Festival, I bought two good sized starts of trollius, aka Globe Flower, which are back in bloom in my back garden now.  What a show they put on!  They have complex and beautiful flower heads on tall stems.  After some experimentation with location, I decided to pop them into a large pot where I could assure they get plenty of water and are in a good spot for showy display, where one can get up close and see those gorgeous details in the flower. 

The trollius are not wildflowers as far as I know, but also looking glorious in my garden this year are the California poppies (escholzia californica), which I learned at the festival last year are considered native up to the Columbia River, and endemic above it.  The ones in the garden I planted from seed some years ago.  These are vigorous re-seeders, to my delight and some people's vexation, I suspect.  They have kept coming up in the narrow mixed border in which I first planted them, but last year decided to come up on the fringes of the main beds, where they look just glorious.  I enjoy them for their bold color, and their draping, informal habit. 

So come on out to the Wildflower Fest, and get some inspiration!  I know I always do.
Detail photo of trollius aka Globe Flower © 2018 Melinda Nettles|Lean2creativeworks
Trollius aka Globe Flower humming along merrily in my back garden.
Picture of California poppies (escholzia californica) © Melinda Nettles|Lean2creativeworks
Californa poppies in the evening light a few days ago in my back garden.
Drawing of a little baby in a field of poppies, with fireflies.  © 2015 Melinda Nettles|Lean2creativeworks
A little artistic license in for symbolic reasons... I'm not aware of a place where California poppies and fireflies have the same habitat, but the Momma who commissioned this piece had California origins and is now living in firefly country. It is available as a print, individual card, or part of a 3-design card set. I'll have some of each on hand at the Wildflower Festival.

NEW SHOW & RETAIL LOCATION!

1/8/2018

 
Stickers and cards and prints, oh my!  Yes friends, starting this Friday, January 12th, you'll be able to purchase my complete line of individual cards, stickers, and art prints at the Maude Kerns Art Center Member Gallery & Gift Shop!  

Also!  For a more limited time, a pair of my original works will be on view in in the Member Gallery.  They will be on display, and available for purchase, until the end of March.

So why not swing by the opening for the new exhibition, A Convergence of Elements: Intersections, 
this Friday, January 12 from 6-8, and take a stroll through the shop while you are there?  
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maude kerns members' show!

11/11/2017

 
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The annual Art for All Seasons members' show and art sale is afoot at the Maude Kerns Art Center here in Eugene!  It is a full-to-the-brim show this year -- the gallery is filled tip-to-toe with a huge number of works by local artists working in a broad range of styles and mediums.  So if you've never been in, it's a good time to go and get acquainted with a heap of local artists.  I've got a couple of pieces in there up on the west wall of the stage area - look for fieldmice and owls!  So swing on by and get a holiday gift or six!  Everyone needs a little art for their homeplace, don't you think so?  You'll find the Art Center at 1910 East 15th Avenue Eugene, Oregon 97403.  The show's open M-F 10-5:30 and Saturdays noon-4 p.m.
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    Melinda Nettles, proprietor of LEAN2creativeworks, an independent art and illustration studio located in the Cape Cod town of Eastham, Massachusetts.

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LEAN2creative works  -  Eastham, MA  -  melinda@lean2creativeworks.com

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