A sweet remake and more eye problems

I don't know if it's reading and surfing the IPhone when I can't sleep (which is unfortunately often these days), or because of the increased painting and focusing on detail work I've been doing, but I need to get back to doing my eye exercises more as I can tell they are starting to become "wonky" once again.  It's a really subtle thing, kind of like when your eyes want to stare off in one direction without your control. 

On another note, I had a bit of a smackdown the other day when I brought my remaining paintings to the second hair salon in my hometown here.  I found some of my best unframed watercolors and matted and framed them, left them off for the owner's consideration, but she returned them all, asking where the fun bright other paintings (acrylic on canvas) I'd done that were displayed on my notecards, etc.  I explained about having another show in Nashville, and, tail between my legs, left her salon with my bin of framed watercolors and a pleasant but firm request not to return unless I had some of those fab, fun, bright paintings to hang.  I can understand her rejection and in an odd way, took it as a complement that my other stuff IS desired there and that she was paying attention! 

As Rumi said:  "Burdens are the foundations of ease and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure."

So I went home and reworked a canvas that I'm ashamed to say I rushed through and hung at the Mad Platter show in May.  It's shown above, after most tweakage was completed.  I did a few things after, but not much.

Hanging art and poll watching

Make for an exhausting day! 

Happily, I breezed into Nashville with no traffic and got started hanging my art at Paige Simmon's Salon in Nashville promptly at 9:30.  With great optimism, I brought nearly all of my inventory, including the 48 x 72 triptych that I wasn't sure we'd find a space for.  Thankfully, seasoned artist and hanging veteran Lynne Pilkerton met me there and immediately restored order and sanity to my day by grouping paintings and finding just the right spot for nearly all of them.  And I mean all! 

In the end, we found a perfect spot for the triptych and hung it -- which can be a real bitch -- with very little difficulty, again, thanks to Lynne's quick thinking.  We also found room for my other largest paintings, and the smaller ones too.  In the end, I left with fewer than five of the 46 paintings I'd started with!   I've posted a few photos of the site and apologize for the poor quality images.  My flash battery was dead and these are with the great local light only.  It really is an exquisite space and hopefully, in some small way, my paintings are making it even more appealing. 

We didn't finish until 2 p.m. and though I'd not eaten anything all day, I had to report to a polling place at three to serve as a poll watcher.  Grabbed a quick bite and reported to the election site just in time and made it through the next four hours, at first bored to tears, then grabbing a pen and paper and sketching all sorts of people that were in line, then handbags, shoes and what-have-you, and finally, after mind-numbingly watching the poll captain try to call the election headquarters and wait on hold for so many minutes, grabbed my Iphone, got the voter verification lookup website, and must've looked up 100 voters registration info by poll closing time.  I felt good that I could help and the poll captain was amazed at the great new technology. It was probably against the rules and I suggested to him that we need to start a campaign now to get the Major Cell Phone companies to donate smartphones to all polling places across america for free for that day.  Anyone with me? 

Crazy Busy! Two installations tomorrow and more!

Out of the blue about six weeks ago, my sister-in-law (she of the golden voice, brilliant lyrics, and luscious music, grammy-nominated Gretchen Peters) mentioned me to her hair and makeup girl, Paige Simmons, who has her salon in the old Tennessee Art League building on Poston near Centennial Park in Nashville.  Its a lovely old Craftsman style home that's been converted.  It has wonderful light, and great style since Paige and her mother did all the furniture, etc.

Anyhoo...  Paige does hair and makeup for a lot of Nashville's big names (well, for instance, Gretchen!) and she shows and sells art there too of several artists, including Kirk Seufert and others whose names I was too excited to capture because ... I'll be hanging my stuff there as well, come Tuesday.  Was there Saturday scoping the place out and another major singer walked in to have her hair done.  I was cool about it and the two fellow artists with me didn't even recognize her at all!  But Kirk's work is just gorgeous and I'm honored to have mine showing along with his at the same space.

The other installation is another upscale hair salon in Smyrna where I live called the Hair Doctor.  It was a spur of the moment thing months ago when I offered to hang some of my work in their lovely but bare-walled space.  Well, it's approaching Christmas time and I have a lot of paintings, so I know I can spruce up their walls, hopefully sell some as gifts, and earn some cash for our upcoming trip to the U.K. 

Then there are a pair of group shows I'm participating in starting Friday.  Centennial Arts Center Gallery is having its annual holiday show running from Friday through Dec. 14, with the opening Friday night.  Hubby David's even coming with me and a bunch of us are going out after for dinner at a great Italian place that is Lucilla approved (so it must be great)...

The last is at Springhouse Gallery in Smyrna.  It's a one night gala fundraiser show being held Nov. 19 but we submit Friday night or Saturday and I'm not sure I'll have energy/work to submit... We'll see.

For now, I'm just painting away!  The three paintings posted here were started recently and aren't finished, but close... the Nashville Skyline one is like the other Nashville Skyline I, did but the star of this show, no pun intended, is the night sky rather than the lights of the buildings...