She Waits

I am working with an image of a great horned owl. High in her camouflaged aerie, wintry and waiting as she sits upon her eggs. I have observed her many times over the years at the old abandoned homestead in the Summer Lake Preserve. She patiently withstands the occasional birders and ATVs in order to raise her chicks in that food rich place. She is silent and powerful, a shadow of the night, perfectly colored to hide in the huge old winter-bare cottonwood tree that remains by the barn. Once I saw her fledged chicks perched in a row high on the top ridge of the barn, their fluffy feathers making them appear enormous. How they got there is a mystery to me. But then that is the thing about owls, the mystery.

Solstice...

Deep dormancy, channeling bear and waiting for the turn.

The big Jacobs Gallery show is finished now and I have settled back into a wealth of quiet private studio days. I have been thinking a lot about the season and the light, or the lack thereof. I feel like I am deep into the birth canal with little oxygen and lots of pressure from all directions but forward. I am not exactly stuck, but rather in limbo, pregnant and waiting.

It's funny how the light will begin to return before the season turns toward summer.  At Solstice, the days start to lengthen as we begin true winter. That has always seemed odd to me.  Likewise, the days are longest at the beginning of summer and wane as the days heat up. Never the less, it is the way of things in the northern hemisphere.

First Friday ArtWalk: Jacobs Gallery

Here is a link to a video of the Jacobs Gallery ArtWalk.  When you reach Hedda's blog, click on the youtube link to #1 HEDDA'S ARTWORKS CHANNEL.

 http://hedda-arts.blogspot.com/

Review,The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

The Register-Guard, November 14, 2013

Organic Vision

By Bob Keefer


At last month's opening reception for the current exhibit at Eugene's Jacobs Gallery, the question on everyone's mind was this: Who is Nancy Watterson Scharf?


The show, which runs through Nov. 23, is called "Three Sides of a Coin". It features paintings by two artists- Scharf and Bets Cole- and ceramics by a third, Grace Sheese.


Everyone who looks at paintings around here knows Cole, who lives in the country west of Eugene.  She's a career landscape painter with a wide following.  She's active in local arts circles. And she's been shown all over town .


And some people know Sheese, the ceramicist, even though she now lives in Illinois. She has shown her work in the past at the Jacobs and at DIVA and taught some ceramics courses here in 2005 and 2006.


But Scharf, who lives in Elkton, seems to have appeared out of nowhere with her sophisticated collection of big conceptual paintings that interweave images of wild birds with urban scenes. Somehow a mature, serious artist has been working right under our noses- and no one noticed.


That's for a reason. Scharf explained in an interview. "Life takes a lot of turns," she said.


Scharf, now 64, studied drawing and painting at the University of Oregon, planning all the while to become an artist. But, as she says, life intervened. She got married, started a family, moved to Sisters and got herself a job teaching art at a middle school.


It wasn't until 13 or 14 years ago that Scharf was able to take the time to start making her own art again on a steady basis. After cutting back her teaching to part time, she started putting in regular studio hours, painting every day, and soon started showing her work locally.


She's now retired from teaching and living in Elkton with her husband, a jeweler.


In those first years of her return to art, she experimented a lot. "There was no pressure to show or to sell," she said. "And so it just developed."


Working by herself, without a teacher, she was able to find a direction she wanted to take with her painting and pursue it.


"Now I'm able to say what I want to say," Scharf said. "I know where I'm going. What I began doing was not like anyone else's work,. But I trusted it."


Her work, as seen at the Jacobs, is an interesting mix of conceptual art and good, well-grounded representational painting. The concept is straightforward: Before people showed up and began to cover the planet, nature reigned.


What if we visualize the natural past of some of our over-built places?


Thus, we see a painting such as Scharf's "Pilgrim's Progress," a big (30 by 60 inches)horizontal image that shows a line of eight tall, elegant sandhill cranes walking among the reeds of an Eastern Oregon marsh, their bright eyes alert. Superimposed on the cranes are nine people you might meet on the sidewalk of any contemporary city, dressed casually, checking their phones, drinking coffee in paper cups.


The cranes are painted in full color. The superimposed humans are drawn in outline, making them tend to disappear into the birdscape. The intersection of the two images is haunting and evocative, throwing conventional ideas of physical reality out of kilter. Do the people and the cranes exist in the same place? Are they in parallel universes? Are we looking and present and past?


As in the best conceptual art, the questions are not obvious and easy, but grow naturally out of the work.


Scharf is also interested in masks, those synthetic faces that separate and connect us. In a disturbing painting, "Getting By in Modern Times," a sidewalk balloon vendor makes an animal for a little girl in fairy wings. The vendor's face is obscured by a balloon mask, giving the man's figure a Stephen King sort of creepiness. Creepier still, salmon swim up the street, and a single crane stands by, watching mournfully over the entire absurd scene.


With landscapes from around the West by Cole and small ceramic pieces by Sheese, this is a show well worth seeing.

Art talk for my show "Three Sides of a Coin"

Let me tell you some of the history of my thinking and a little bit about why I approach my visual process the way that I do.

 For as long as I can remember I have had a sense that there is more to this world than meets the eye. Sometimes I get a hint, a glimpse out the corner of my eye, a ghost of something. Our eyes are the gateway to our concept of reality. What you see is what you get, right? They faithfully transmit to our brain and ta-da- we have our picture. But when you think about it, our eyes only discern a fraction of the light wave. What about the part we don’t see.  Does that mean it doesn’t exist?

Animals sense things that we do not. Some see better with their ears, or their skin. And plants don’t have eyes at all. Imagine for a minute what the world is like to a fish, or a 300 year old tree, or a 3 week old butterfly.  I think about that a lot. I especially think about how birds see reality. They exist among us in a world of their own, with their own unique agenda and cycles.

So here’s the big question: Are birds in our world or are we in theirs?

I am concerned about how we modern humans seem to feel separate from nature. After all, we are a part of nature as much as any animal or plant, but we don’t seem to know it.  Or maybe we just don’t remember. We have separated ourselves with our inventions and human constructs.

This body of work you see tonight reflects my investigation into the hidden connections and tensions between humans and the rest of nature.

The first bird to enter my paintings was a great blue heron. There are many herons along the Umpqua where I live. At some point I began to consider how herons are virtually the same today as they existed thousands of years ago before the human species came along. That is not hard to believe if you’ve ever heard their croak. These patient still watchers became the voice of nature in my work.

After while fish began migrating through my paintings, just as they migrate through the river by my studio. In thinking about the endless wheel of seasons and the bird and fish migrations my sense of time has shifted. The natural world is full of these quiet and ancient cycles that have become a symbol for me of longevity, history and the primal power of nature.

My most recent paintings have focused on wetlands. Watching birds has drawn me to these primitive stops on the annual bird migration routes. They are the fragile watering holes and nurseries for so many organisms. And often they are the flood control for streams and rivers. Yet they are so easy to zoom by in a car.  It is tempting to think of these essential places as less than desirable land, buggy bogs that should be altered in some way.

I ask a lot of questions in my work, and I offer no answers. There is no correct way to interpret one of my paintings. My hope is that you will be able to enter a piece with a little of yourself and find your own meaning. And through my process I like to think that I have honored our fellow travelers on this planet.

Announcing my new show at the Jacobs Gallery

The show opened Friday evening, October 11th and it was beautiful.  A large crowd attended to check out the show and hear the art talks. Grace lives in Illinois and was not able to make it, but Bets and I spoke and answered many questions.

New Work-Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Four and Twenty Blackbirds is my most recent painting. I have been steadily drawn to wetland habitats in my recent work. This fragile habitat is so easy to overlook and dismiss as a muddy bog when one glides by in their car. So much of our wetlands have been dried out and managed for human uses. Yet these habitats support a wealth of organisms and provide essential support for migrating birds that pass through on their ancient cycles.
In Four and Twenty Blackbirds I explored wetland reeds once again. I tried to convey my wonder at the power and beauty of nature. I put myself out on a limb in terms of technique as I did not begin with the bird images in the underpainting as I usually do. I also worked with the new palette of color I began with my previous painting, Pilgrims' Progress. I hoped to give a stronger voice to nature in this painting. The yellow headed  blackbirds give me a thrill when I look at them in their black masks. They are in charge of their world.

New work-Pilgrims' Progress

Finally, at long last I have finished my two new paintings.  With the first, Pilgrims' Progress, I started with a mental vision of color and a strong sense of the concept which led me all the way. I have been trying to loosen up my style a bit and reduce images and ideas to the essentials necessary elements. I feel really happy with this piece because I believe I accomplished that goal. It goes where I wanted it to go simply and succinctly.  And oh those Sandhill Cranes. They have an almost human quality to them, more than ordinary herons and cranes.  They are really huge and walk more like a turkey or a chicken. I was lucky to observe a pair in their elaborate mating dance at the Summer Lake Oregon reserve one winter. These mysterious migrating birds require the wetlands that are threatened all across the western United States.
Pilgrims' Progress is large, 30' x 60", and the images march right across.  I wanted it to seem a continuous flow, like a river of people and birds.

Baking pies

I baked an apple pie today to donate to a community auction.  I arrived with my pie and laid it with 40 or so other beautiful pies of a wide variety.  I had no trouble figuring out where the pie table was because there were women gathered looking over the pies with a proud and critical eye. Pies are serious business!
Every time I bake pies I am transported in time to my mother's kitchen, my grandmother's kitchen, my aunt's kitchen, our neighbor's kitchen. Suddenly I am a child watching and helping in one of those farm wives' domains where I spent my early years. Tying on an apron does it to me as well.  Hanging out laundry, canning fruit, collecting and drying herbs. I hear echoes, a whisper in my ear. A brief glimpse from the corner of my eye There is something in the act that is a particular kind of wisdom, a ritual performed over and over by women through the ages, their sure hands rolling and pinching and slicing.
I think about all those women whose creativity was limited to their daily routine. They are there beside me and behind me. Once again I am reminded that I am not separate, but rather a continuation and expression of all sisters who have come before.

Update:
I learned today that there were a total of 51 homemade pies donated to the fund raiser.  The pie auction brought in well over $2000 for our community center.  I do love our small town.

Good Vibrations

 Listening to a speaker this weekend at the Oregon Country Fair I was struck once again  by how all things are connected at the farthest reaches of abstract reasoning. The various approaches of different disciplines seem to reach similar conclusions  At first, the speaker came at it from a mathematical approach, then physics, then astrophysics and metaphysics.  Ultimately these approaches came to a similar conclusion: Everything in the universe that we perceive is vibrating. Everything. Ergo, there is much that we humans do not perceive.  In order for a human to perceive anything, whatever it is has to be shooting energy toward us, like the light of a star.  Just because there seems to be empty space between the things we perceive does not mean that there is nothing there, but merely that we do not perceive it. Wow!

To an artist, negative space is a familiar idea.  Negative space is as much a part of the drawing as the marks. It is tangible and has enormous weight. Developing a composition takes into account the entire space, both negative and positive. One tries to create some sort of cohesion. Yet 2-D artists are limited by the eye. By using that human organ we try to evoke other ideas and more subtle perceptions by using color, visual texture and movement, and triggering memories of past experiences. We play with perception But that seems sort of like working backwards  doesn't it? The negative space the speaker talked about is vast, unknowable, mysterious, and not limited to a canvas or piece of paper.

As humans, hubris is one of our biggest flaws.  We like to think we know everything and can manipulate our world without consequence. We like to be the center of our universe. The speaker's talk reminded me how fragile and narrow human perception is and how we limit ourselves when we are not open to all possibilities.   I am awed by the enormity of it all and how frightening and confusing these ideas could be to someone. Thinking about it made me feel more compassion for those who choose dogma or prejudice to organize their worlds into manageable boxes. For myself, however, my curiosity outweighs my fear, and I have long sought explanations that match my experiences.

Inside Out...About the process

Ever the observers, artists in a sense do rob from people. Their experiences may translate into a line from a book or play, a song lyric, a photograph or a painting, etc. That's usually okay though, and why is that?  I think it is because the artist has interpreted it from within their own personal experience and it has become a part of themselves.  They are not separate from the work but speak from within it.  Too much detachment and the work is a lifeless intellectual manipulation, and the subject is like a bug in a jar.

I've been thinking about Austin, the landscape painter in Jane Urquart's provoking book The Underpainter. He reduced his life to the controlled rectangular views contained on his canvas.  These narrow, precise windows enabled him to keep his life and his anxiety about human emotion at a distance. His intimate studies of his model/muse are in his own words an " intimate violation", cold and calculating. Austin takes himself and his "work" very seriously, never letting it conflict with any personal attachments. Yet as he searches for passion in his work,  he doesn't realize that he has missed his opportunity again and again because of his unwillingness to accept love in his life. Sounds great, huh?  Yet it is a heartbreaking look at the interior of an artist's life.

I've known artists like that.  Somehow in dedicating themselves to their work, they take themselves too seriously. In their desire for success they set themselves apart and above the rest of us. Austin shows us the trap inherent in that position.  Life is messy. Period.  It seems to me that profound meaningful artistic expression comes from entering the fray, getting bumped around, usually a lot, and coming up for air from time to time.  Art comes from within us, is translated through our beings. For me, making art is an experience in itself, filled with struggle, exhilaration, fear, and the pure pleasure of seeing images emerge from chaos.  That is the joy of it, to feel my ideas, experiences, inspirations, and observations reorganize and synthesize into one unique visual image.

ArtWorks NW 2013

Umpqua Valley Arts Association opened their annual juried awards exhibition ArtWorks NW on Friday with an evening gala. The juror Martha Morgan, curator of the Portland gallery Chambers@916, selected 35 works representing 27 artists from the 171 works submitted by Pacific Northwest artists.

I was honored to have three of my paintings selected for the show, as the competition was stiff. I was so surprised and pleased when my name was announced as the first place winner with a cash award of $1000.  The juror selected my painting Adaptation as the winner. Hooray!

 



 

The setting for this piece emerged from one of my many sojourns to Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge near Paisley, Oregon.  The sheer magnitude and inevitability of bird migrations inspire me. If anything is sacred it is the way these beautiful avian creatures mysteriously appear and then disappear from the dormant late winter landscape. The piercing beauty of the birds in the stark cold neutrals of this desert oasis moves me into a deep peace.

 

I feel the history of this fragile place in an almost tangible way that leads me to thinking about the future. Relentlessly, the growing populations of people with their subsequent need for development threaten this ancient system. What if there were no birds left? How can we decide whose world is more important, theirs or ours? Or perhaps a better question is, are we really separate from the rest of the inhabitants of this earth?

 

 

 

 

 

As big as the wind....

The other day my friend's young daughter told her that "the kale is as big as the wind". I love the way small children leap over fences and boundaries in their minds to make fresh  associations and comparisons.  Their brains have not yet been fenced into separate sets of ideas, isolated rooms of thought, rigid pathways, halls of connecting fragments trapped in houses of ideas.

In another life I taught Kindergartners. I fit right into their free world of suggestion, imagination and innovative association. We were kindred spirits.  The "kale" girl's mama is a poet.  I am a painter.  One of my sons is a musician, the other a sculptor.  Different mediums but artists just the same.  What is an artist but someone able to venture far into the abstract and away from conventional thought. Artists reorganize the world in new ways that spark recognition in other people and reflect the world back to them. Often artists provoke thoughts and questions that people do not realize they have. Artists use words/sound/images/objects to express things others don't know how to say. Picasso said, " It takes one a long time to become young."  Is that what I am doing?

Gardening

I am at a difficult spot in my current painting. I have thrown everything I know into it and now I just have to try different things until the direction emerges. Every painting seems to have this place where I have to step out into the abyss. It's painful, takes everything in me to do it, but at the same time I love the process. It's the crux of the painting for me. But, I have to take breaks.

And so, I have been out in my garden. You may say that gardening is my main hobby, but hobby isn't the right descriptor. That implies dabbling in something that you can pick up or put down.  Growing up on a farm wove the cycles of the earth deep into my inner being.  When spring comes along I feel the awakening in my core. The soil in my fingers, the sound of the bees and birdsong, the energy of the growing plants put me in the absolute timeless present. It is as essential to my well being as breathing.  When I am in my garden, I open up in ways that I can't put into words. My thoughts go silent. I am very small, and feel my place in the complexity of nature. And when I am very lucky, fresh perspectives settle on me like a warm gentle rain. Rather than a hobby, I would call my gardening my zen practice. And any gardener knows that there is lots and lots of practice!

Home at last

It is so good to be home from vacation. Leaving my studio for a time has made me appreciate it that much more. I treasure the life I have carved out for myself here beside the river with daily time to reflect and practice stillness, to listen and wait, to explore the moment through visual imagery. It keeps me in tune with the universe, whole and grounded. My life as an artist allows me balance, such a fragile state of being I find.

While I was away I learned that three of my recent paintings have juried into the ArtWorks NW show May 10-July 5, 2013. This is the annual juried awards show sponsored by the Umpqua Valley Arts Association.
These three pieces were selected for the show:

The Certainty of Change, 30 x 60

Adaptation, 40 x 30

 

 

Within You Without You, 40 x 30

 

A Shift in the Weather

Like I was saying, the rain forest is a product of rain and lots of it. With the intense heat, somehow I forgot that part.Oh my gosh, even though it's the dry season we have it in buckets. It really feels like home now, sans the wind and cool temps. And just like we do in the Pacific Northwest, people get out in it and go about their daily business.  I confess that it's a bit easier to do it here in shorts and flip-flops than at home with insulating layers, boots, slickers, etc.  But it's relatively the same sort of endeavor. Suddenly I feel like an experienced local...not really, but it helps.

Rain Forests

I am sitting outside our vacation rental in the jungle of southern Pacific Costa Rica and thinking about rain forests.  I live in a rain forest, but northern and cool.  This tropical rain forest has many similarities to my temperate rain forest, but everything  seems to be magnified by at least ten. It's the driest month of the year here so the cicadas are deafening, like summer crickets on steroids. The forest has a palpable presence, a huge organism, mysterious and overbearing. The eerie sound of the howler monkeys floats through the dense growth. It is the stuff of stories and legends, primitive and foreign.

The forest is warm and moist and so very fertile. Life seems to spring from this perfect set of conditions in endless variety. The insects and birds, the flowers, animals and vegetation: all are so flamboyant compared to those in the muted and foggy forests of the Pacific Northwest. I have been here before and I will visit again. Feeling this intensity around me is invigorating and at the same time humbling.
I think I could get used to the forest here if I spent enough time to become comfortable with the plants and animals, cycles and risks.  But today I admit to a healthy caution and respect for the unknowns out my front door.

On Sandhill Cranes

I've been working on a painting filled with Sandhill Cranes.  As I study the cranes I am reminded of my first encounter with them in the Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge.  At first I thought nothing was there in the empty landscape save the dried winter reeds and low grasses, dormant in the icy late winter winds.  And then all of a sudden I saw them, enormous, awkward, yet surprisingly graceful as well, the same bleached violet-brown-gray of the sleeping marsh, comfortable residents of their world.

More recently I saw the cranes at Summer Lake during their mating season. I was lucky to observe the mating behavior of two birds close by my parked car. As the two birds danced and preened in their elaborate mysterious ritual I cautiously snapped pictures through the unopened window, then quietly and slowly eased the car away to leave them to their privacy. Like long distance relay runners, these huge migratory birds carry something with them rare and precious, an unconscious instinct, a seed of survival to sow in the present and pass into the future. Perfectly adapted, the old generation passes on the necessary knowledge to the new.  And the cycle continues.

My favorite memory of Sandhill Cranes is a late summer evening in French Glen, seated on a low hill watching the day dissolve, rosy light giving way to empty blue gray dusk.  Over the Malheur Marsh the whirring calls of the cranes echoed across the wide basin.  Quiet, so quiet, save the bird calls, hypnotic like the ringing of a Tibetan prayer bowl.  Wild, primordial sound in perfect harmony with creation, ancient and timeless. I felt humbled to witness to such searing beauty.

Night skies in the desert

Coming home to the high desert skies.  I forget how big the sky is here, the dry crisp cold winter air, the smell of sage and juniper. Last night I looked into the infinity of stars overhead and gave thanks to the universe.

The power of an image

"Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight."
Orhan Pamuk in his novel My Name Is Red.

I am immersed in the dense mysterious structure and subject of this book set in 16th century Istanbul.  The story centers around the secretive world of the master miniaturists, the painters of the day. They were commissioned by wealthy rulers to paint illuminations of stories recorded by master calligraphers.  The work was painstaking, lengthy, and done by candlelight or available light. When a page was finished it was gilded by a master gilder.  After all the necessary pages were complete they were bound into a book for the commissioner's exclusive use. I am only part way through the book but what strikes me the most right now is the power of an image in the 16th century. It is difficult to imagine from today's perspective with pictures such an ubiquitous part of everyday life.

In a world with little to no imagery, how profound and moving it would be to behold a painting.
It makes me think about the value and power of a great painting.  A painting has the potential to transform and transport, offer solace, and connect with spirit.  It can also disturb, call to arms, motivate and provoke. It helps us figure out what it means to be human.

Another quote from Pamuk:
"All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time."

So true. That brings to mind Mark Rothko's color field paintings... It is powerful to stand in front of such a painting.  You feel it reach inside you.

Pamuk's quote leads me back to the idea of going beyond the limits of time again....
When I begin a painting, I have basic ideas of structure, imagery and palette, sometimes even a vague visual inspiration for the "feel" of the piece. Eventually I reach a point where I believe the painting really begins.  I have to reach outside myself to a place of non-linear thinking in order to proceed. Perhaps that is some aspect of the timeless void Pamuk mentions.  I seek a kind of primal hum where every layer and aspect of my painting works in concert and the piece takes on a life of its own.  To do this requires risk, trial and error, and detours. I must let go of my preconceived ideas about where the painting should go. It is intuitive and there is a lot of tension and fear intrinsic in this process.  But there is pleasure too, and joy in discovery.  The rewards are great, and I have learned to trust it. 

More about time...

It seems to me that memory has to be a factor in understanding time. A smell or a sound can trigger a memory and I am suddenly transported to an earlier time and place. At that moment the past and the present are one, simultaneous.

Then there are the other kinds of memories, not from this life.  Occasionally I have a memory or a dream of something I cannot have known from my life.  I sense my ancestors around me at times. Some call these memories of past lifetimes, but I'm not sure.  Maybe it is something else, a sort of genetic memory. Or perhaps a flaw in thinking of time as linear.

And let's consider stories, lore and mythologies.  From the time the first humans had language, stories have penetrated time and brought the past into the present.

This question of time....It's about perception really. Is what I see what is really there, or is it just an idea? As with the concept of non-linear time, I am compelled to overlap realities in my painting imagery. My fascination is to see what will happen when different stories and points of view are superimposed and forced to occupy the same space.  It's interesting to me to overlap beings with very different senses of time, such as migrating birds or fish with contemporary humans. The overlapping causes the planes to fracture and the space to reorganize into something else, a new kind of unity, altered and provoking.

Without Separation: An exploration of perception

The reception for my show Without Separation was a great success. I traveled through a snow storm to Ashland Thursday with no mishaps thanks to my trusty partner and our new tires!  The show looks beautiful.  The gallery director Chad McGruder did a fine job of hanging the paintings and arranging for the catering.

 

We were delighted that so many people came out to see the show in spite of the challenging weather. I had many in depth discussions about my ideas and the questions I have been pursuing.  Everyone I spoke to seemed to understand and appreciate what I am trying to do with my work, and that was very gratifying. The overall impact the paintings had on people was of special interest to me. For me, a successful painting draws people back again and again.  It challenges the viewer in some way, spurs questions and conversation. I saw that happen repeatedly Thursday evening and I was very satisfied. It is a strong show and a good venue for the work.

 



 

 

 

Musings on the nature of time

I think a lot about the nature of time.The mystics say that it is not actually linear; that past, present, and future occur at the same time, or perhaps in a spiral.  Sometimes I get a hint of that. For instance, time to a redwood tree is very different than time is to a butterfly, or a stone.  Is time measured in the length of a life? But then I consider the migrations of fish and birds, the flow of a river. The collective migration is an organism itself. We don't know when it was born or when it will die.  It just Is. Redwood trees grow together in a grove, meshing their roots in a communal mat, clasped fingers that hold them all upright together as one, growing into the future hundreds of years.One generation of fish gives way to the next, and the next and the next, from the past into the future.
We humans are so egocentric.  We think it's all about us, one life, that's it.

About the new show



I have been thinking about all the various views people, animals, religions,cultures etc. have of their reality and how those views affect their perceptions. It seems to me that our ideas about time also may skew what we perceive. What is real, anyway? What would happen if I showed more than one world simultaneously?
My new show in January has the lastest of my explorations of these questions.  This body of work focuses on the tension and bond between humans and nature.



A Blackbird Perspective

And so it begins...

I have been thinking about a blog for a long time. An upcoming solo exhibition has compelled me to start. Finally. This is one of my New Year's Resolutions, so today is the day that I begin.

My show will be held on the Southern Oregon University campus in Ashland.  The exhibition will be in the Stevenson Union Gallery beginning January 7th and ending February 5th. There will be an artist's reception Thursday, January 10th from 5pm to 7pm.