First Fridays and Famers Markets

May continues as a major art month in Greenville, SC, with over 30 galleries and art studios in the Pendleton Street Arts District.  Once again we made the rounds and saw old friends and new at the various galleries.  One highlight was to meet Charles Pate, the son of sculptor, Charlie Pate, JR  Charles came to my attention via the news when his sculpture of a man carving himself out of a tree was unveiled on the corner of Main and Perry.  It's an amazing lifesize piece rigorous in its action exquisite in its detail.  Awe inspiring, indeed.  And then Lindy, Vicki, Julia and I all agreed how a painting by Charles looked so much like our friend, Homer, the musician.  We stood in aw in front of the massive portrait full of lights and strength. We chatted with friends, Teresa at Art & Light Gallery and Suzanne at Millagro Studios, Urban Peacock (Kavita) at The Village Studios, along with Tricia Earle and Dabney Mahanes, and Julia and Vicki, who collect art form all the cities they live in, purchased another. This time it was one of the crow drawings by Dabney. 

Saturday was a fun morning with another local favorite event, the weekly downtown Farmer's Market. Tents are set up on Main street outside the Westin Poinsett and local produce, cheeses, plants, art, pottery. I brought my sketchbook with me and worked on another drawing while waiting for Mark and then we sauntered around where I bought some tomatoes and hand-shelled peas.  And we always enjoy our breakfast by Soby on the Side.

So of course, this means the writing is not happening right now, but it is re-energizing to be drawing again.  Drawing is not my usual approach to paint, I like color and texture, so collage, assemblages and paintings offered me more satisfaction in the past.  But now for some reason, I'm finding it highly rewarding to sketch - getting back to my fascination with the face and figure. 
I'm also framing some artwork, some of my own for future shows and some for my daughter's new condo.  She has been building a collection of original art since she was in her early twenties and now has quite a nice variety of art all by Greenville artists.

Dias de la Muertos Beeswax Encaustic

I've finally had a bit of free time to do art. While, Kendall and Savannah spent  yesterday outside doing their arts and crafts on this perfect fall day, I took this opportunity to play for the first time with mixed media beeswax encaustic collage.  I ended up starting five and finishing four for the Dias de la Muertos show I'm participating in at Milagro Studios during the First Friday gallery crawl November 5th.  There may be three older oil paintings and perhaps my mixed media 3-D assemblages (still debating since they're rather fragile)  and I plan to do at least one shadow box for the show.  I love working with beeswax.  I've been hunting for this effect for years - that old Victorian look with it's dark Poe-like effects and the aged yellow appearance the beeswax provides.
Since Nick Bantock's, Griffin and Sabine books, I've been fascinated with mixed media and collage. In my early days of painting I produced a number of of collages.  But then stepped away from it except in my art journals to work with oil paints in the standard manner.
I didn't know how to get this effect until I saw videos by Jack and Cat Curios and Suze Weinberg. Now,  I've discovered this is my medium.
I wanted to work with a couple of nontraditional Day of the Dead themes: the first delves into my philosophy about delirium vivens - the passion to exist, a concept (in addition to many others) introduced by the character Conchis at his villa, Bourani (Greek for skull ) in the novel, The Magus, by John Fowles.
I chose a Burne Jones man clad in stylized black leather armor running through the ocean (emotion). The Ouija board represents the subconscious here while the crow, skulls and skeleton are quite obvious in their symbolism. 
The second harkens back to the second Crow movie, which featured a moody Day of the Dead festival