On With the Show

Logging truck, Georgetown. Painted August 2013

My show is up. That would be my display as featured artist for the month at Art on the Divide Gallery Coop in Georgetown, California. Hardly a show, it covers little more than one wall in our cozy, but richly-packed, little gallery in a 150-year-old brick building in a historic mining town in Northern California's Sierra Nevada Foothills. The gallery is hardly a commercial venture, more like the glue which holds our small group together. A group that is more about mutual support and inspiration than making a cash register ring.

Dodge truck and house, Church Street, Georgetown. August 2013

I joined the group as a photographer about a year and a half ago. But for better or worse, its inspiration and support has renewed an interest in watercolor painting that last existed in the 1980's when one of my daughters and I enjoyed a few painting classes. So I used the anticipation of my turn to fill the featured artist wall as an impetus to dive back in. (Dive in ... watercolors ... get it?).

Preparation for this little display has pretty much filled my time for the last month or so. Time not otherwise filled with my half-time day job (environmental cleanup project manager), correspondence (to and from grandchildren and a growing number of Typospherians), maintaining the indoor/outdoor entropy balance, being a husband, being owned by two doggies, napping, acquiring unneeded typewriters, and answering those delightful recorded telephone messages.

A watercolor lesson completed in 1983

Like the completion of any great project, it has left me a bit at sea. Where to turn next? Polish the TR6 and get it ready for its next owner? Ensconce myself in my workshop happy place and begin releasing some of my incarcerated typewriters from the dungeon? Research wooden boat building? Sign up for a wingsuit base jumping class? Refurbish the rudder and daggerboard on Sharlet, our beloved little sailboat? Pack up Hilda and the doggies and head for the coast? Sling a hammock in the garden and give it a thorough test? Explore more hiking trails?

Stay tuned!

Gallery garden tools. Photographed December 2012

The Mindling/Peters family farm, settled in Washington County, Ohio, about 1840. Painted in 1983.

Back alley nasturtiums, Fort Bragg, Mendocino County, Northern California. Photographed about 2005.

"The Fox", folksong, illustrated 1983 (with thanks to Peter Spier)

Sanderlings, Newport Bay Wildlife Preserve, Photographed January 2012.

Study after the style of Peter Spier, 1983

Horses in Utah, 2009

Imagined oak and barn, watercolor, 1983

Blacksmith shop in Novato, California, watercolor, 1983. Imagined as it might have appeared about 1900. The building is now a coffee and tea shop.

Oh, by the way, the show will be up throughout September, with an opening on Sunday afternoon, September 8.