I started in Los Alamos at the house of Mackenzie Duncan.

Mac with one of her “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” inspired series.

Still thinking about purchasing this portrait from “Once Upon a Time in the West.”

I then went to Karen Gearhart-Jensen’s studio, and saw her prints and photo collages and Kam Jacoby’s historical photo composites. Both very different and great to see and learn about.

Kam completely knew the history of the woman in the historic photo based on entries of her in the Lompoc public records. Interesting to get acquainted with someone long passed!

C. Wood’s studio was in a beautiful rustic setting, also in Los Alamos. She had many pictures of farm animals in bold inviting colors.

Anna Jud Hallauer’s home and studio was far off the beaten track, but well worth the trip, both for the art, the artist’s explanations of her work and process, and the beautiful views of her and her husband’s vineyards. Her husband is also an artist and had a collection of clay figurative sculptures.

Most of Anna’s work is made with the dollar, like this pillar.

Anna also shows her work in her native country, Germany.

Seyburn Zorthian’s painting and calligraphy art studio can be found right next to the family tasting room for Buttonwood Winery, where her art is on display. Definitely worth a visit!

Patricia Hedrick’s charcoal pastel work was mistaken for photography by a few visitors while I was touring her Solvang studio. From figure studies to water abstractions, they were lovely and showed her incredible blending skills at work!

The artist’s pallet!

Patricia with artist Sonya Fairbanks, who also does exquisite work in charcoal pastels.

The second day, I started off at the home of colored pencil and water color artist Teresa McNeil Maclean.  From mountain-scapes to trains disappearing into the horizon, her distinct style holds the viewer with its colors and forms.

Being a fervent lover of clay, I made sure to make the trek out to the lovely home of Donna and Wesley Anderegg in Lompoc. I can hardly describe what a delight it was to see the enormous collective body of work this artist couple had created! Donna’s functional flatware showcased her ability to draw through delicate carvings and her eye for design in both the glazing and composition of her many vases, cups, and other vessels. Wesley’s sense of humor and observation of human idiosyncrasies were evident in his many ingenious clay figures and sculptures.

Donna Anderegg amongst her pottery.

Delicately carved motifs on vessels.

One of Wesley Anderegg’s figuritive pieces.

A whole wall of Wesley’s hilarious and imaginative busts. On the floor, “The Victom,” a satirical piece of a figure with three knives in it’s back, in a cage led by a two-headed dog…? Completely over the top! Loved it.

Bird brain and two other figures. Detail from the wall-case of figures.

Global Warming and other pieces by Wesley.

Rebecca Gomez in Los Olivos had large landscape paintings and some abstracts of trees that captured the area quite well. Her husband had some neat photography up, as in the photo below.

Allen Koehn with some of his photography.

Lovely landscape and floral paintings abounded in the studio of Christine McCowan.

Rise Delmar Ochsner had many large scale brilliant paintings of equines, dogs, landscapes, and portraits in her charming, well-lit studio in Santa Ynez.

Mike Magrill, a wood artist, was kind enough to explain some of the processes of making wooden bowls and composite vases. It was interesting for me to learn how the methods of making vessels in wood and clay bear some commonalities.

Gene Inglis-Ward, multi-media artist and teacher, had a wide variety of art in many different mediums and genres. (She also had an awesome collection of pottery, which I enjoyed hearing about! Thanks, Gene!)

William Cates photography captured the beauty of the Santa Ynez Valley and of his previous home, Virginia, with landscapes, animals, nudes, and much more. I wish I could have explored more, but had to race to another engagement afterward. Next year!

Gwen Cates paintings of Santa Barbara County and of her previous home, Virginia, were at least as lovely as the landscapes they portrayed!

UPDATE:

It’s January 23rd, and I’ve just managed to get the new photos together for this post. Let the tour continue!

Rick Hubbard and some of his paintings, in his and Judi Stauffer’s lovely home.

Judi Stauffer by two examples of her digital photographic art exploring the Inka concept of the three worlds or planes of existence.

Rick’s Breakthrough series: humorous, meaningful, and relational.

Another clever example of how Judi portrays the three worlds as conceived in the Inka tradition.

Hot off the press: a new cardboard piece hanging in the studio.

Mike Brady in his wood sculpture studio, brimming with plein air sculptures that are just too precious to really leave out in the elements!

More of Mike’s whimsical works that reference the craft arts of the South and are mostly kinetic, designed to move in the wind.

Renee Kelleher in her charming studio, reminiscent of the south of France.

Paintings of interiors, rural landscapes, and domestic animals carried my visual interest across all of the walls of Renee’s studio.

[Any artists that I did not see, but would like to be included, please email me. I'd be more than happy to update this post and have fun seeing your studio!]

From left to right, Ishmael Amin, one of the musicians/artists who modeled for the painting at Carr Winery and Reds Tapas & Wine Bar, the painting “Sueños de Flamenco,” Francisca Escobar the silent auction winner, and myself.

The event went well! People Helping People raised quite a bit of money to help farm and vineyard workers become self- sustaining. The attendance had increased significantly since the event began last year, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for the art!

With fellow participant artist and event coordinator, Karina Puente, and artist and wine maker, Seyburn Zorthian.

With Lily Nathan, (2008 participant), Michelle Puente, and fellow participant Kari Crist.

Thanks to everyone involved!

Looking forward to the Vino de Sueños charity art auction event on Saturday, November 7th. My painting is presented on the label for Richard Longoria Wines. Here are the details:

Date: November 7th, 2009
Time: Preview by Invitation: 2-3 PM
General Event: 3-6 PM
Location: Santa Ynez Valley Marriott Hotel
Cost: $40 per person including unique 14 oz. logo glass
Dress: Business Casual

BUY TICKETS AHEAD OF TIME!

Participating Wineries:

Alma Rosa Winery
Au Bon Climat
Buttonwood Farm Winery & Vineyard
Cold Heaven Cellars
D’Alfonso-Curran
Fiddlehead Cellars
Foxen Winery & Vineyard
Hartley-Ostini Hitching Post
Kalyra
Makor
Richard Longoria Wines
Vogelzang Vineyard

About the Charity:

“People Helping People and the Vino de Sueños vintners and artists will host a celebration of the first release of wines under the new Vino de Sueños brand. The Vino de Sueños wines will be available for tasting and sales.  In addition, the original art works for each of the Vino de Sueños wine labels will be placed on silent auction. A label poster and copies of the original label art will also be available.  The Marriott Hotel has generously agreed to host the event, New West Catering is furnishing appetizers, and there will be live music.”

If Artiste Winery in Santa Ynez was too far from the sandy shores for you Santa Barbara dwellers to venture to see my art, it is now available for your viewing pleasure downtown at the Coffee Cat. Now you can view it whilst sipping the beverage of your choice in utter comfort and convenience. Enjoy!

Coffee Cat

1201 Anacapa, Santa Barbara

Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 7am-7pm

After arriving at Connie Rohde’s C Contemporary Art Gallery in Los Alamos, CA, I was surprised to meet the artist of the quilts and discover not a savvy middle aged Southern woman, but a very young man seemingly in the prime of his career. Having grown up in the South and studied art and architecture at Cooper Union, Haynes began experimenting with quilting and has developed a very unique repertoire of colorful fabric mosaics that enliven subjects from the icons of this latest show, American Nostalgia,  to those closer to the artist. More of Haynes’ work is displayed on his website and his blog.

The images in this show were chosen in an unusual manner: through the tallied results of a questionnaire collected from 700 people on what icon they felt represented America. The results were extremely varied, and consensus was reached in groups of less than a dozen in most cases and from only 200 answers sharing commonalities, suggesting Americans draw a sense of national identity from a multitudinous bank of ideas and concepts.

Klimt-like gold quilt of American icon, Michael Jackson. [The squarish embroidered signature reminds me of an inustrialized version of Gustav Klimt's boxy signature.]

Pie and Flag were the two most common ideas identified in the survey results and thus were combined in this piece.

No wine and cheese at this opening! American nostalgic food items only: soda, beer, hot dogs, and apple pie!

Detail of President Lincon. The photo this was based on was chosen for its ability to convey the humble and quiet nature of this nation’s 16th president.

From the front.

The infamous aluminum foil ball!

Lily and my paintings side by side on the lower row.

Loved Albert’s wood sculptures!

A lovely piece in stainless steel by Suzi Trubitz.

A lovely painting by Karina Puente that represents a Vino de Sueños wine label.

By my painting.

Al, Connie, and Lily at the opening reception.

Connie holds private art lessons in this room in the back of the gallery for anyone interested. Quite a nice space.

Lily talking with fellow artist, Suzi Trubitz.

Lily and I sitting beneath our paintings on a bench hand crafted by Albert.

Lily Nathan

Sandy and Lily Nathan

Guy Rocky Stroup surrounded by his artwork.

Stroup describing the process of making this piece from glass, tar, wire, and wood.

Here you can just barely see what Stroup called a gift, a heart that formed in the cracks of glass while it was distressed by heat and other forces.

Here, Stroup explained a bit about his piece, Mourning Glory. Pictured is a print, whereas, the actual piece was in acrylic, wood, and copper. In short, it was a response to the rippling effect of 9-11 throughout the US.

There were also light-hearted pieces, (no pun intended!) that required wearing 3-D glasses for full effect.

Connie Rohde, co-owner of C Gallery, helps guests at the opening view the painting as Stroup intended it to be seen.

This painting also had a slight 3-D effect when viewed with the glasses.

A photograph exhibited in the show.

Stroup began as a sign maker, carving and illustrating redwood signs. He later attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, freelanced as an illustrator, and built props and sculptures for the film industry. “Fine art was always the goal,” Stroup claimed, “it’s just [taken] me thirty years to get there.”

Stroup shows his abstract paintings and wall sculpture in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and in California’s Central Coast. To view more work by G.R. Stroup, view his website at:

http://www.fineartbystroup.com

The entrance to the middle room, where our paintings were shown. Two of Lily’s paintings hang here.

A corner crammed with my paintings.

Lily’s paintings on the left, one of mine on the right.

I painted these from photographs by Ernst Mutchnick. I also painted the models’ faces for the photo shoot.

A cluster of my paintings.

Lily and some of her lovely paintings.

Artist and model, daughter and father. Lily and Barry Nathan in front of Lily’s paintings.

Lily and I with our singing teacher, who stopped by for a look at the show.

Daiken, Lily, Rob, Michele, and Mac.

Lily and I with friends.

Lily and I with friends Rob, Daiken, Mac, and Michele.

Lily in the foreground, and my mother getting creative in the background.

I’m grateful to Simo, who put together a video that gives a taste of the show and surrounding wine-tasting and gallery rooms. Just to clarify, he shows some of the art that goes on the Artiste wine bottles, which is not ours. Enjoy!

How amazing to discover the many road blocks to showing art! I never thought my own mind would work against me, but it has! Even my subconscious has joined the fight, railing nightmares against any ambitions I might have. But give up, I have not!

The hard way to frame:
By hand with a miter saw kit!

After putting in an effort to make some of the more basic frames myself, I found a much smarter method: taking the task to a professional. Imagine that!

Susan Granger at Solvang Graphic Arts Gallery & Frame Shop was very helpful and did a great job matting and framing my pieces. Susan runs a very professional shop, with two kinds of mat cutters running the lengths of half the walls in the back room, and a table-saw to cut custom size frames for seriously stunted artists like myself that stretch their own unconventionally sized canvases!

I love the technical aspects of showing! I wanted to do a series of posts on learning to make frames, but I ended up throwing myself into the midst of the process this last week without much time to post about it. I wanted very basic frames that would make the work stand out and didn’t like the idea of hanging the canvases bare on the wall. My compromise was buying very thin strips of pine from Ace Hardware in Santa Barbara, and later, from Nielson’s Hardware in Buelton when I ran out of the first batch.

If you need framing or matting done, contact
Susan at:

Solvang Graphic Arts Gallery & Frame Shop
(805) 688-2025
1693 Mission Dr # B101
Solvang, CA 93463

I was out photographing the full moon that came out around 5 pm, and an hour later we heard about the fire that by 7 pm, had me packing. I took a few more photos having my camera out, (I couldn’t resist, as horrifying as it is!) We’re okay, packing as I write to head north to Santa Ynez.

Here’s is the fire over the foothills, a view from the curb of my apartment on Sola Street and Laguna Street. It looks like my apartment is still two whole blocks from the evacuation warning zone, so we’re safe for now. I’m still ready to take off if I learn that the zone expands, as it very likely will during the night.

That’s the moon behind the smoke. As you can see, the fire knocked out the power on the hill below it.

The power came back on intermittently in various areas, as shown below.

It’s unreal. I still can’t believe the wind might bring the fire toward the ocean and right through downtown Santa Barbara. Makes me wish I had less possessions and possibly renter’s insurance. And getting ready for an art show at the Artiste Winery in Santa Ynez December 6th, I’m not sure how to handle packing up all my art. I’m not even sure that I’m equipped to move it all. It makes the prospect of it all being sold to different homes even more appealing! The chance of it surviving the fires that plague California are much better if it’s not all in one location.

I can hear sprinklers going off. Business as usual or fire retardant?

I went out around 12 and the fire had spread along the hill crest to the east.

This is a long exposure, which shows how lit up the streets were from the full moon directly overhead.

In the next two pictures, you can see the trajectory of helicopters moving across the orange skies.

It’s a bit fuzzy, but you can see the lights of many emergency vehicles in this shot.