Lynn’s Garden Tour
In the next couple of weeks I’ll be preparing to present my second main interest and love to the local community in the form of a ‘Garden Tour’. The local Master Gardeners have created a fund raising event around a one day summer tour of a few select gardens. Although it has made us complete projects that have lingered for years, the additional stress has taken some of the peace out of the yard for me. It’s like hanging an art show…. Suddenly the framing becomes an issue and the painting process itself takes a back seat for a while. I hope to take a week off just to focus on the yard, but that’s a little tough when your business is at home. The gang at CCP must be tired of me saying “After the garden tour!”
On another note,collage and mixed media artist Anne Bagby has agreed to film an art instruction DVD with Creative Catalyst next year (2008) . She’s a very interesting combination of drawing, collage and almost a Klimpt like patterning. Should be wonderful!
It’s part of my job to review art instruction workshop DVDs produced by other production companies to see if we want to carry the workshop. I’ve been truly frustrated with camera angles, lack of reference materials, poor audio or just simply “watch me do my thing” mentality without any true instructional value. How crazy is that?! Art instruction workshops should be just that. Not a venue for an artist’s ego but rather an opportunity to share information and expand the community of artists. No wonder so many people are leery of purchasing a DVD workshop!
And finally, In many ways, we are on the outside looking in on what’s going on in the art world. Every once in awhile we catch a drift of some disgruntled person that complains that too many people are using Yupo, or watercolor in an opaque fashion, or heaven forbid… white paint. Sometimes it is difficult not to be threatened by the new. But to forbid new media and experimentation is like forbidding someone from using a word processor and requiring them to write their novel with a quill pen. Hopefully we can all recognize that it is the content of a work and not the materials that makes it successful or not. Watercolorist Dean Mitchell paints award winning, highly valuable small watercolors (many are only a few inches in size) in a very traditional style. He holds his own very well in this modern era. Clearly he is not threatened by new techniques. He has found what works for him.
The world is big enough for us all.
-Lynn-