What's New?

Now that the holidays are past and us here in the North are in the middle of the long dark months of winter I have been busy, busy in the Studio.
I can't tell you just how many sets of batteries I have been through in my heated socks!
I have also been busy planning out the year - penciling in show dates on the calendar - working out schedules and sending out entries/applications. Hopefully, soon I will be able to announce a slew of new festival and exhibition dates. So, lets keep our fingers crossed!

I recently completed my newest “Fish” sculpture - this one is near and dear to me as it has been on the bench for quite some time while I worked out and collected the parts to get all the details just right.

I am also honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Mickie Workman Scholarship for the Arts Business Institute winter workshop during the Buyers Market Show in Philadelphia, PA in Mid-February.  I am very excited to attend the workshop and feel that it will serve as an incredible asset through the knowledge gained in furthering my art career. Again, I can not express my thanks enough to the Arts Business Institute for having been selected for this honor.  
For all my artist friends I will be sure to take good notes!
A Link to the workshop can be found below
http://bit.ly/XgDF. Q8


Thanks for reading and stay warm!

How quickly it has become a long road!

This armadillo is the second piece I ever completed! I can not remember exactly how many years ago that was. I know it was before I had moved to Pennsylvania and still lived in Texas. I guess that was my inspiration!
I gave this piece to my sister some years ago as a gift and had not seen it in quite a while. It was brought back to me over Thanksgiving in need of some repair work after meeting the business end of a tennis racket while they were chasing a bat in their home. Apparently, this is a big problem in upstate New York!
Well, it is all fixed now and the damage was not so bad considering.  However, while working on it I could not help to reminisce  on originally building it and the journey since then but what struck me the most was just how crude it is!
Don't get me wrong my work lends itself to crudeness but I liken that to abstract painting. I will be the 1st to tell you that I am no Art Historian and this is only my opinion, abstraction does have to be done with great skill to be done correctly and “work”.
Looking at this armadillo - noticing the rough welds the clunky details etc.... it is fun to see how my work has evolved and if I may say so improved from this early piece.
In revisiting this piece the one fact that struck me the most was that even after all these years I still have that same passion for creating these works and still feel the excitement in completed pieces - in the end I hope that still shows.
So, who knows what I will be writing about or where I will be years from now!

By the way the image below is the 1st piece I ever completed!