Sukah Time

A few people have asked me to post pictures of the sukahs we build every year for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. I suppose I could as easily blog them on my fairy gnome house blog
just as reasonably. I love this holiday- bringing our family outdoors at such a lovely time of year. Already we are a month past Sukkot, but I leave each years creation up until the rain and wind batter it down. Though the dried flowers have blown away, we still find an occasional sunny winter afternoon to enjoy a cup of tea and a treat under our free form sukah, or gaze at the stars through its loosely woven roof on a clear night.
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And, kind reader, in case you were wondering, Im a bit behind posting my newer pieces. Perhaps this weekend?

Studio Soiree Oct 27th

I will have a hodge-podge solo show of my work up at the Share Exchange in downtown Santa Rosa through October. Sono-ma.com is turning the reception into one of her fabulous studio soiree's, with vendors sampling their wares, raffles and more.
October 27th (thursday)
come in costume!

Our guest list is limited to the first 50 people who respond. RSVP for you and a friend today! Hope you can make it!

(This Sono-Ma event is geared towards adults - make it a date night or a parent's night out and enjoy!)

-Hope to see you there!


RSVP to:
holly@sono-ma.com

or off facebook

For more details about this free inspiring evening for local parent artisans and art enthusiasts see http://sono-ma.com/category/studio-soirees/.

A Tea Ceremony and Soldiers Marching through Time

Tea Ceremony
2' x 4'
This ones been fun. I do so like to combine all the ways I like to paint- you know. So, dear Reader, I have a tree painting, an animeople people, and carved wood. Graphic style with realistic. Two wood ducks having tea in a bonsai


close ups


Foot Soldier
30" x 48"?

and in case you thought I was just sitting around. Originally I was going to paint each of these animeoples as a separate painting. But who wants to dwell on soldiers for half a year? So I combined them, focusing my attentions on my favorites. The research was fun- I had to find foot-soldiers through time- not generals- and then use the art from that period, and find an animal they would have depicted.

Summer Daze and Studio Makeover

this table surface is way more beautiful than anything I can paint!
I am SO sorry my kind readers. It has been some time. I'm still chugging along- haven't put down the brush. For some reason I temporarily obsessed on 'doing up' my studio after the opening at Castle in the Air. My friend Chris Knerr, cement mason and graphic artist extraordinaire, helped me transform my scary chewed up particle board work table into a lovely cement surface. And I used up a lot of reallly old paint to break up the old band-aid colored walls. One of those- "why the heck didn't I do this ten years ago" projects.
Meanwhile I am working on a commission- a trade for a computer-yay. And while that challenging partnership resolves itself I am working on a more epic animeople painting of foot soldiers marching throughout time. And after that? sigh...I have to decide where my focus will be for the next year, for the show at RiskPress Gallery. More animeoples? hanging Box Art? more trees with a touch of the whimsical or sureal?

Chris teaching me how to make the cement table. I turned all the cement in a rusty wheel barrow with a shovel. it was pretty muscle intensive. then we added this adobe red.

hee hee power tools. hee hee

Not sure why the blue paint looks yellow here, but the finished table is almost too nice to work on!
more studio corners:

Castle in the Air Show Opening Night

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to come to the opening reception at Castle in the Air. And thank you for all the support from people who wanted to but couldn't make it. It was a lovely evening of animal headed good times. John, one of Castles teachers and a fabulous artist, put together the lovely bird headed lady in her crepe dress, demurely yet confidently passing out the catalog and card for the show. I wish I could say I shared that same confidence but she did inspire me to try harder to discuss my paintings with complete strangers and pretend I am not a rather shy person. My Elephant headed self-portrait, Will Work For Peanuts, was fabulously shown on a boxed Easel, its large paint drawer full of peanuts. And I was happy to see people walking about actually circling titles in their catalouges of paintings they wanted to buy from the walls, willing to wait until May 15th to actually get their treasures home. Almost half the 24 paintings sold (or will soon be) so far! I did not bring my children to this show. I would have had to put bird masks on them, dressed them in little velvet suits and hung them up on the wall, which, while entertaining to myself may not have been appreciated by them. Thanks again and please stop by to say hello to all my painted friends up on the walls if you happen to be passing through Berkeley.

On Animeoples in General and the Reception in Particular

Well Deer Reader, my sister, a Jungian trained psychologist, gave me a possible answer to the question that has flited at the back of my brain like a small moth headed person. That is- WHY am I seeing so many Animeoples in art lately? I, occasionally, when time permits, and so not often, go web surfing through the incomprehensibly huge world of art blogs and sites. And more often than not I find artists who are painting animal headed people. Some pieces are fantastic, some are less than. Most are in clothes worn hundreds of years ago. And I wonder- where is this all coming from? Are we dragging these images up from the depths of our collective unconscious?
My sister suggests that people are wanting to go back- pre-industrialization, to find our animalistic natures and return to nature. Is that it? To be less refined? To take a step back to the simplified, straightforward and slower paced days? So we stick a deer head on a woman in Victorian hoops, whose hands and garb are human and indicative of a past century or two, but whose outlook is toward the hills.
I like this answer.
So while perhaps I am searching consciously for some totemic chimera my unconscious strives to live on berries in a unmolested wild wood.
I hope you can all make it to Castle in the Air next Thursday at 6 for the opening!