I don’t know how to tell everyone how much it means to me that you came and made this show of ours such a success. Thank you all!

Take a deep breath, because here’s a long story about what happened:

The day before the show, in between Craig’s dad ferrying last-minute frames from Artworld to Dale’s Gallery for assembly, and Maria’s dad picking up over 60 easels from 5 different suppliers, while we were getting grubby putting easels together, the marketing department for the Parkside casually asked us if we’d be OK if they gave a gift of an “Ultimate Spa Weekend for Two” – a weekend accommodation and $100 spa gift certificate – to anyone spending $1000 or more on art at the show. (Um, hello? Allow me to consider this carefully for a moment….Yes, I think I’m OK with that.)

The day of the shows was a flat-out busy one. The afternoon show was a bit of a blur for me – I spent much of it in the penthouse trying to organize the last minute coffee and tea, when we realized we’d bought WAY too much coffee, but no stir sticks or napkins. My fault. Oops. I hear the coffee was fantastic, though, thanks to Maureen and Zack at Bean Around the World. And the goodies brought from the Italian Bakery by La Piola chef Cory Pelan tasted (to use some hilarious words coined by my cousin’s daughter) “like proof of heaven!”

I did manage to get downstairs and see the paintings and photographs displayed in the natural daylight streaming in through the huge Atrium windows. What a dream venue! Everything looked gorgeous. Thanks to Jim and Julia and the Parkside!

Then I picked up our delightful friend and bartender, Adrienne, and I have to thank her for the fabulous job she did! She got her Serving It Right ticket just to help us out, and she kept the wine flowing and she did it with style! It got the evening going in no uncertain terms.

I tried to remember to snarf a few of the cute little ham and cheese buns from La Piola but kept getting sidetracked by all the wonderful people who came to the show! If anyone saw me or met me at this point, I must apologize if I seemed giddy. Chalk it up to sleep and food deprivation. Thank goodness for Lindsay who magicked a delicious orange out of her purse which pulled me back from the edge. The Penthouse food seemed miles away when I was downstairs.

All evening I was overwhelmed by the number of beautiful, kind, and thoughtful people who turned up! I wanted to spend time talking to everyone, but it just wasn’t possible to focus. I kept getting stuck in the little back room where I was showing examples of giclees and prints, so there were periods of time when I was incommunicado, sadly enough. My apologies if you looked for me and couldn’t find me – I was probably up there in that room.

I think maybe about 250 or so people came to our show, based on food and wine consumption and observation of numbers in the Atrium and the Penthouse. I ran out of business cards, and I’d had a lot of them there. Somehow we managed to plan our night on the exact same night as the Annual Downtown Gallery walking tour. This was a complete accident, I swear it, since I had never even heard of the tour until the night before the show. However, I don’t regret it, because I think we got a lot of visitors in high spirits from their tour who came to rest at our venue. And why not? Free food and wine? It’s a perfect end to a perfect evening of art! It seemed like people were enjoying themselves, which is the whole point, really, isn’t it!

All in all, I would say that this show was an unqualified success. Thank you to those of you who who helped me so much with organizing, with advice, with reality checks, and with being there when I needed you. Thanks to those of you who bought paintings and giclees from me already, as well as to those of you who are about to (you know who you are!). I am humbled by the kindness you have shown me, and I hope to make you all proud.

I can now confirm that I will co-hosting an evening of art at the newest AviaWest resort in town the Parkside at 810 Humboldt St. with my friends and fellow artists Maria Hutchison and Craig Bauer on Thursday, November 26, 2009. We will host both an afternoon tea from 1-4 pm, as well as a wine and cheese in the evening from 7 – 9 pm. Check out the Facebook Event. It’s right before the holidays, so it’s time to kick back and have some fun. Come and join us! More on this very soon!

Well, I have just finished talking with some very lovely people, and the first of TWO (yes, you read that right, folks, TWO!) Pre-Christmas shows has just been born. We’re finalizing details but I’m pretty sure that you should be keeping yourself open for some fun on the evening of THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26th, 2009! Details on this will be available tomorrow, and details on the second show will be available after Friday. I’m really glad I took Fridays off! Otherwise work might be interfering with my art life!

I am so proud of myself. After hours of staring at minutiae (read: HTML code), I think I’ve done it! Check out the portfolio page, and the year 2009 page within it, for my later paintings. I’m still missing 2 paintings, but by tomorrow evening I hope to have them uploaded also. My gratitude goes out to my web designer, Meghan McCrae, owner of Clever Daisies, for once again talking me off the ledge!

Forgive me, readers, for I’m remiss, it’s been 3 weeks since my last blog entry…
I’ve been happily busy, doing reconnaissance for a new (and very fun!) commission, attending an artist workshop (run by Chris Tyrell , hosted by Opus, at Studio 16 1/2), painting, and (oh, yeah!) working, though I am at home sick today. No, it’s not swine flu.

I am pleased to announce that I will be co-organizing a pre-Christmas sale of fine art, prints, and cards, all produced by Vancouver Island Artists. On November 9, we should be able to tell you the details of who, what, when, where and why. This is going to be so much fun! I look forward to seeing you there!

When it rains it pours, but when the sun shines, it’s blindingly beautiful.

Thanks to Rob Destrube and his wife Cheryl, and help from my friend Maria, I now have a grand total of 35 print-quality digital images of my paintings. I can’t thank them enough; I could never have afforded to do this without their generosity and kindness. What is more, they are very encouraging and open people who support the art community at large. I am so lucky to have met them.

I can now upload these images and have a website worthy of submitting to galleries, and I can make high quality giclee prints as well! This is good because not everyone can afford original paintings. I am thrilled. Now I’m fumbling around in this website, figuring out how to upload the images properly! Stay tuned!

I am trying my hand at organizing a little art group, sort of a “Stitch N Bitch” without the stitching. I’m pretty excited about it because I recall the Zen-ness of my high school art class.

It was the great equalizer; people from all walks of life are creative in their own way, and I loved listening to the class dorky musician suddenly find something hilariously in common with the class stoner. And then proceed to free-associate in a monotone, while sculpting for an hour or two about crazy stuff such as:

“Hey, Mr. Pleece-man, don’t arrest me…that’s not pot, that’s doughnuts. I got the munchies. Here, have a jelly.”

To this day, I have no idea what Jason Botkin was rambling to Matt Turner about, but I do know that it cracked Matt up, and the whole thing cracked everyone else up. To me, that’s the beauty of producing art. It gets you out of the logical side of your head and makes you think differently, and it makes people get to know each other on a different level.

I did promise to show some in-progress photos, but got so into the painting that I didn’t want to stop to fiddle with the camera. Here’s the only snap I took.

My studio, like most places in Victoria this summer, is scorching hot, so I moved outside to paint yesterday. Beacon Hill Park provided plenty of shade and beautiful things to paint. I wanted to do a full painting in one go but was thwarted by my loss of light. Instead, I managed to block in the large areas of colour, and a tentative composition, and if the weather stays fine (ha!) I’ll go back and finish it today. I will post some photos of its progression to completion next week.

Later folks!

Erica

My paintings are being shown at a local Italian restaurant called La Piola.

They use food from local farms, one of which is in trouble. The Land Conservancy of BC is trying to purchase Madrona Farms so that it will be used to produce local organic food in perpetuity.

I approached the manager and the chef of La Piola about doing a fundraising event using my art (and possibly their food, but I don’t know that yet) and giving a portion of all the proceeds to the Land Conservancy in order to save Madrona Farms.

They are pretty pumped about the idea. It seems like a 4 way win situation:

The Land Conservancy gets a donation.

La Piola gets some PR

I get some PR and some money

Some lucky person gets a painting and the knowledge that they helped sustainability along, just a little!

What do you think?