In-Person Demo at Ann Korologos Gallery

It's hard to believe, but it's been nearly four years since I left the mountains of Colorado for the coast of Maine. Harder still is the realization that I haven't been back since I moved! Like the rest of us, my travel plans for 2020 were scuttled, so even though I still have some trepidation about it I am glad I can make at least a short journey this week.

I will be kicking off the adventure with a live, in-person printmaking demonstration and conversation at the Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt. This coming Thursday, August 26, 4:00-6:00pm. Reservations are required. Please call the gallery at (970) 927-9668 or email art@korologosgallery.com. I hope to see some local peeps there!

A little of this and a little of that...

The loon linocuts are still drying on the rack... getting close, but we've been really humid here this week so the last ink layer is still a little bit tacky.

In the meantime I'm keeping plenty busy! This past week I gave a quick Intro to Linocut workshop at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge's headquarters in Rockland. The workshop was a nice wrap-up for my show there, which came down on Thursday.

The workshop was sponsored by the Friends of Maine Coastal Islands, a local non-profit that supports the Refuge's mission with education and outreach programs. 

We were sold out for the program, and the participants did such an amazing job creating small prints in a VERY short amount of time (about 90 minutes) that we're looking at scheduling another workshop this winter.

In the week ahead I'll be spending a lot of time up in Rockland, facilitating a week-long field sketching workshop through the Farnsworth Art Museum. If you've never visited the Farnsworth, you owe it to yourself to do so the next time you find yourself on the coast of Maine. The museum has an extensive collection of work by the Wyeth family and hosts spectacular visiting exhibitions as well. (Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals is there right now... I think we'll spend a little time drawing them at some point this week!)

Back in the studio I'll be working on small, temporarily secret linos for Project Postcard at the opening of Birds in Art at the Woodson Art Museum in early September. What to do, what to do?

Pecha Kucha Night Midcoast

Hey! I know that linocut! Photo by Michael O'Neill

Hard to believe it's already been a week since I launched my new Maine chapter by participating in the Pecha Kucha Night in Camden. The presentation videos went live yesterday, and I'm happy to share mine here for Brush and Baren fans far and wide. All the presenter videos are linked at Vimeo, if you'd like to get a feel for the entire event. Thanks to Ned Lightner of Belfast Community Media for video recording and production.

So... now what?

Linocuts at Ann Korologos Gallery

The journey to the other side of the mountain (literally) is complete.

And by "literally" I mean literally. Not figuratively, which is what many people mean when they say literally, a misuse which has somehow been legitimized by respected dictionaries. Argh.

But this is not a vocabulary blog, and I digress.

I went over the Continental Divide and came back again. I live in the Rockies. This is normal. (Literally.) The return trip was a wee bit more adventurous weather-wise than I prefer when traversing high mountain passes, but I'm home and it's all good.

The reception and "Rosebud" demo at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt went well; it's always fun to help people wrap their brains around the linocut process. And I don't think I've ever had a more festive arrangement for talking to visitors:

Stockings hung by the chimney with care. And above the mantel? A slideshow of work in the gallery, so everyone gets to be over the fireplace from time to time. (And yes, that's "Dinner Party" up there at the moment. What? Did you think I wouldn't wait until one of my own pieces came up?)

So far today I've been catching up with administrative tasks – bookkeeping (rah), correspondence (RAH!), packing work for shipping. I even managed a little bit of end-of-year paper purging, although there's waaaayyyy more to do.

It's time to head back to the studio and I'm faced with the question of questions: Now what?

Do I start right away with a new big piece? Or maybe produce a couple of small things? Do I want to work on another bird? Or a landscape? Or something for the "Underfoot" series? Or maybe none of those things. Sometimes the hardest part of the work is deciding which of the vague ideas wandering around inside my head needs to be tackled next!

So I'll go push around some sketches and sift through some photos, and see what happens. Because, as Picasso is reputed to have said, "Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working."