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.

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?  

Well boy howdy, who knew mushrooms were so darn interesting??  I did not.  To be honest, the first time I decided to take myself on out to the Mount Pisgah Mushroom Festival a few years ago, I thought well OK, it's something to do but what's the big deal?  But good-heavens-good-gracious-good-golly I was wrong about that!  It is a beautiful and fascinating array that educates while it wows and entertains. The variety of species is remarkable, the colors and shapes and details a true delight.  If you are local and have never been, you must go in the future!  You must!

Like the Wildflower Festival in the Spring, there are tables and tables feet-upon-feet-upon-feet long all loaded up with amazing displays of nature's bounty: 'shrooms this time, collected by the mycologically knowledgable, and arranged beautifully amid mosses and branches and the odd skull or two.  

Alas, I did not get to see much in the way of the display this time, so the mushroom-diaplay photos are from 2015.  I was busy all day womaning my art-vendor booth, where I sold art prints and cards and stickers, and the first design in my new line of t-shirts.  It was great fun once again to get to meet all y'all who dropped through.  I enjoyed chatting about art and nature and all manner of things.  Thanks to everyone who came out to support the Arboretum, and also my art!  (I am happy to say that 20% of my gross sales for the day went to support the Arboretum.)

Thanks again as well to all my supportive friends, especially the talented Kimberly Munn, who helped me out during the Festival.  In addition to being a highly skilled jeweler, she is a very fine photographer, and took the photo of me with my booth.  (Don't hold her responsible for the other pictures, tho... any she took would undoubtedly be much better!)  You can find her elegant, hand-made artisan jewelry at her Etsy shop, Revelling.

That's right, folks: the jackrabbits are off to spend some time at ColdFire Brewing!  After their delightful stay down at Noisette this summer, they have decided they have a taste for travel... Especially if it involves locally crafted, delightful food and drink.  The folks at ColdFire have invited me to hang my art in their fine establishment for the months of August and September.  I installed the bunnies this morning, along with their goat and owl friends and a family of fieldmice.  

I hope you'll stroll down with your own friends and have a pint, made for you right on site by the Hughes family, and of course also a burger from HayBaby, the food cart that lives out front. You'll find ColdFire Brewing at 263 Mill Street, Eugene.  I myself plan to be there on Wednesday evening for some beverage and vittles and some good chatter with fine friends in a lovely, welcoming space.  Perhaps I shall see you there!

Come on down to the inaugural Booth Kelly Makers Market this Friday, July 14 from 5-8 p.m.!  I will be there selling my wares (including new stuff!) and answering questions about my art.  There will be a variety of artists and other makers exhibiting and selling their work under the shelter of the old Booth Kelly mill.  The Market will be a stop on the Springfield Second Friday Artwalk, which starts at 5:30 at the Emerald Art Center.  A mighty fine excuse to have an stroll on a fine summer's evening, don't you think so?

Yes, friends, I do think Noisette Pastry Kitchen deserves an exclamation point.  It is, no doubt, my favorite spot in Eugene for pastries and pie and cookies and, well... pretty much every culinary indulgence in the realm of baked goods.  And mighty fine savories too.  And tea.  And coffee. And such a lovely space and friendly owners and staff.  And and and.  

Which is why I am very pleased - very pleased indeed! - to tell you that  my paintings will be hanging there for the months of July and August.   

I hope you will get a chance to go down, get yourself a scrumptious Gibassier , my oh my, or just keep it simple with a perfect butter croissant, and hang out with my jackrabbits and goats and owls and suchlike, who will be the stars of the show!  Over on the right there are a couple of them, to tempt you in.  (Perhaps it is only me, but it seems nothing could be quite so nice as having French pastries with a jackrabbit. I wonder if those bunnies would enjoy a small sip or two of your Cafe au Lait?)

Two Sundays back, I had such a delightful day. I spent it hawking my art-wares in a small tent, longish grass sprinkled with those little white lawn daisies and nice-smelling herby things beneath my feet, a small brook lined with willowy things and spring-green trees behind me, a temporary village of similar tents beside and before me, meadows of wildflowers and oaks beyond and, a little more distant, fir-covered slopes rising toward a miraculously sunny blue sky (in this valley of western Oregon these things indeed seem miraculous when one is at the end of the Gray Season).  In between the tents were festival-goers of all sorts: kids of all sizes, mamas and papas and grandparents, and oodles of other grown-ups solo and in groups, of all ages and dress.  Many were clad in flowery garments befitting the event: Mount Pisgah Arboretum's annual Wildflower Festival.  It's a nature-education themed day, with nature walks and talks, plus live music, food, native plant and art vendors.  It is a fund-raiser for this lovely open space reserve that, I'm told, has been held since the 1980s.  Now that's a nice long run!

​And no wonder.  I do declare, a celebration of wildflowers: what a good idea is that, no?  The main event is a hall filled with big long tables of every sort of wildflower you can imagine (photos below).  It's all stuff that grows around here, with labels that tell you what it is, if it's native or something else, and suchlike. It is beautiful, fascinating, and informative.  A real treat.  If you are local, and have not been, do go next year. You will be pleased you did, yes indeedy.

One of the things I love about this show is that the specimens are displayed in vases and jars of all shapes and sizes.  It is as if there was a call to all involved to bring every vase they had on the back shelves of the pantry, tucked up in the attic behind the Christmas decorations, up in the unreachable-cabinet above the fridge, next to the home-canned tomatoes in the larder, gathering dust beside the curious assortment of fasteners at the back of the workbench in the garage, nestled beside the hose-valve washers and other oddments in the potting shed, or tucked back behind the hen feed in that cubby behind the chicken house, and bring it on down on to loan for the day.  There is an individuality and humanity to the assortment of vessels that I find heartening.  It also makes for a good game of instant history... trying, for example, to invent the backstory for the green glass crystal-cut vase that reminds me somehow of being in my grandparents house in New Mexico, especially the pantry, and its cool concrete floor, its open screen door through which the smell of dry grass wafted, and its tall cabinet doors, painted in that 1950s forest-service green.  But I digress.

At any rate, it was such a delightful day; it was my first festival as an art vendor, and I am inclined to mark it down as a success!  I had such a nice time talking to browsers and buyers about the art and its subjects.  I chatted about art technique with lots fellow folk-who-draw-and-paint, which was good fun.  And so many of you who came through shared with me stories about goats and deserts and jackrabbits and fireflies, the current obsession - I mean focus -of my paintings.  

I was so nice to find that my paintings of critters and plant-scapes conjured memories for so many people.  Among other subjects, I got to chat about cholla (Cylindropuntia) and its stunning landscape (and the jackrabbits who live there) with people from the Sonoran desert of Arizona.  It is not every day that I get to talk about cholla; it's one of my favorite plants, with a reputation for grabbing people, who soon learn to steer clear.  I also learned, from festival-goers who grew up in the lands where fireflies roam, that there is a regional distinction in nomenclature: fireflies or lightning bugs, depending on where you grew up.  I am forgetting the lines of divide, but I shall make it a subject of survey at future festivals. (Perhaps someday I shall make an artsy map to show the distinct lightning-bug/firefly regions!)

So, I hope you enjoy the photos if you did not make it out this year.  And!  The fall equivalent, The Mount Pisgah Mushroom Festival is coming up on October 29th.  Imagine those tables filled with mushrooms instead of wildflowers, and you get the idea.  It is similarly fascinating and well worth a visit.  I plan to be there as a vendor, and hope to see you there!   

I am very happy to announce that my stickers and cards can now be purchased in person, at a real live brick & mortar location!  Yes friends, if you live in the Eugene-Springfield area, take a mosey over to the Washburne Cafe on Main Street in Springfield.  New owners Charlie Hester and Derek Weber have a nice little retail area featuring local folks' goods.

Get yourself a nice turkey-cranberry sandwich and a cappuccino, with a side of Farm Animals stickers.  And for desert? A cupcake and a box of holiday cards, of course!  Enjoy your tasty eats in this most-delightful historic building, in a nice bright and cheerful space with exposed brick walls, and tote home your happy purchases, all the while knowing you are supporting local businesses!  What could be more satisfying? 

P.S.: A packet of Farm Animals stickers would make a very nice Hanukkah gift, don't you think so?  And a small fireflies card or print, or a message of peace a very fine Hanukkah greeting?

Salt marshes.  Tides.  Lighthouses.  Kettle ponds. Crabs.  Lots of them, large and small;  the Horseshoes, giant and prehistoric,  the Fiddlers, with their one giantly oversized claw, hurrying scurrying into their tiny little holes when human-folk show up.  Oysters.  Striped sea bass.  The bay and the sea.  Short trees.  Voles and mice and chipmunks and bunnies.  Whales!  Seals! Sand!  Lots of sand.  

These are strange and wonderful things! These are things that are not on the front doorstep if you are at the end of my home valley in Oregon, land of very tall trees and mossy-ferny things.  But! They are a dime a dozen out yonder on Cape Cod! Indeed they are.  

And that, friends, is where I have been. Neglecting my shop, forgetting my daily habits, and instead standing on the beach with an easel and brush, covered in sunscreen and tick repellant, and happy as, well, a clam.  And learning oh oh so very very very much about art and light and nature and creatures of all sorts.  Including artists, fascinating and wonderful creatures indeed.  

My purpose was to build my skills, and get inspiration from a new landscape.  My formal education on the Cape was taken Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill.  For five consecutive weeks I studied with a string of lovely teachers and artists: Nancy McCarthy helped me hone my color knowledge with nature as a lens; Lisbeth Firmin taught us her method of abstraction and color and vibrating edges and many other things, with Provincetown as our focus; Larry Horowitz showed us beach charcoal and orange flickering backgrounds and dramatic skies;  Hannah Niswonger held a class full of fantastic lessons in the art of good teaching, and art process (including the "swamp method" for mixing plaster - a most important skill), and how to make soul-satisfying ceramic animals;  and from Suzanne Siegel, a robustly fortified toolbox of watercolor tricks and ever-so-useful tidbits.   

I did not go in to this adventure with the idea that I will become a landscape painter or a ceramicist (though my opinion on this may have changed after the fact... I had a great deal of fun with both!), but instead to take a heap of classes that would help me experiment with my art in a more oblique way. I aimed to learn more about color and composition and abstraction and rendering light with truth, and just learning how to handle a brush more deftly.  I took the ceramics class largely because I fell in love with the goat sculpture used to plug the class in the catalog, but reasoned that it would be a bit like studying a building in a 3-d model in order to understand it better, as one does in the land of architecture from which I hail. And so it was! And much, much more: the medium is not my usual, but it is still all about form and shadow and mark-making, and creating creatures of character, and not overthinking what you are doing.

​My informal education was taken every afternoon after class, in the marshes and on the shore, in the galleries and museums, the ice-creameries and the boulangerie, on the docks, at the produce stands, and under the dramatic light of this place's very special sky.  

More on these things soon, I hope, for there was much learned that might interest you.  Like the very long history of arty folks on the Cape... Edward Hopper, and the Provincetown art colony, and other such things.  For now, I will leave you with these few snaps of the work I did and the places I went!  
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P.S.: The shop is back open!