Thursday, September 30, 2010

Studio Tour

Over the weekend I took the afternoon to to a semi-local studio tour of 9 artists.
Luckily the weather co-operated and it was a nice day out. (Sitting in the tour van and getting up and out all the time was torture, for me though. I managed to injure my tailbone slipping on the step and bouncing on my tail down to the concrete pad.)
The first stop was a charming pottery/painting studio. The artist uses her painting skills to decorate her pottery work. lovely fruit and floral themes on all amnner of pottery creations.
The next artist raises alpaca and uses their wool to create luxuriously soft knits, and amazingly soft stuffed animals. Here is an alpaca mom and her baby.
Some of the alpaca items, hats, scarves, mitts, sweaters, stuffies ect..

Elaine was part of the tour as well with her polymer clay work, but alas, there were too many admirers at her display to get a good photo.

Here we have a fibre artist, she mostly does various dye and dye techniques, but she also does amazing quilting work, which wasn't displayed. as well as photography of local wildlife which she uses in her cards and prints.

Another artist has her studio on her farm in a nice sized building, huge windows and wall to wall paintings and artworks. She does acryllic and water color painting, felting, all sorts of different needle works, everything really.

The same artist as above. I had to show this dragon, all needleworked in gold thread, beads and sequins, the details are amazing. It took her 2 weeks of 10-12 hr days to stitch this gorgeous and priceless work. I drool, seriously.

This pottery artist is very different from the first one, the patterns in her work are more textural, though there were a few painted pieces. She also does amusing little faces, and "mosquitoe house" garden decorations.

The last 2 artists are a husband and wife team who have thier studios in the basement of an old old schoolhouse they have renovated. The live in the upper floor.
She does plaster casting impressions of nature scenes, animal tracks, feathers, different plantlife ect.

This one is a huge casting of a busy gopher area, full of rodent tracks.

Her husband does black and white classic photography using a bellows style camera, which my photo didn't turn out of, sadly. lots of nature scenes, and he does images in a totally darkroom, slowexposure where he runs a flashlite around the subject and ends up with a wild light outlining the photo subject.

It was a really fun and busy day seeing all the different local artisans, and their equally different studio areas. So much talent, and so much inspiration. I hope they do a tour next year too!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Swift Current Fall Gift & Craft Sale

Alrighty My good pal Elaine the entirely too talented polymer clay artist otherwise known as Tooaquarius  http://www.tooaquarius.com/ and I have decided to host our own gift & craft sale Dec 4th!!

We are renting the entrepreneurial center in town and  so it'll be smaller about 30 tables, but very exciting as neither of us has planned an event like this. However we've done enough shows that we know what sucks and what's a nice touch.

Lotta details, busy busy for awhile getting it advertised and such. Very excited to see what happens with this.
to book in e-mail craftsale@tooaquarius.com


Cindy

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Kittys

My half grown kitten Blaze is a tech cat... he can turn on the computers, and what he searches for is amazing : grreeabdf for instance.
and of course when I am on here he needs to nap on me.
He also thinks empty cat food bags are the bestest toys...



Last night my BF Jackie was telling e that her eldest daughter found a tiny kitten on her boyfriends farm, and for a day and a half no momma cat. The tiny thing hadn't opened his eyes yet. So they got kitten formula from the vet and took him home. However the next day daughter went off to collage. Mon Jackie could get home at noon to feed, and his eyes opened, but 1 might be blind. Tues was ok for feedings too. Yesterday didn't work so smoothly. So I am kitty sitting during the day. It's name is Teddy Bear. And he's the size of my hand. You can see the slight film on the left eye, might be a baby thing and he'll be ok, might be a bad eye.
he/she's had a bottle

and then was tired and fell asleep:

I moved Teddy to the pet kennel Jackie brought and he's happily napping.  Blaze however has his fuzzy nose outta joint, so baby is in the office/studio with me with the door shut. My kids never took a bottle. I have bottle fed lambs on the farm, and took a turn with a calf. kittens are very different, so this will be a learning experience. A cute and fuzzy one, awwww! Might not get a whole lot accomplished today, darn. (hehehehe, snuggle)
I did make a few things yesterday, and am still finishing up another, so once I finish I'll photo and post.