My studio on Lowell Open Studio day

It's been a while since I posted - I've been so busy with work and trying to get things set up to help out with publicity for Western Avenue Studios Artist Association (WASAA) that I haven't had any time to post. Creating a blog for WASAA is turning out to be a much bigger project than creating one just for me. Especially with no budget and my very limited HTML skills. I did get a volunteer designer to help create a banner and help with the overall colors, etc which will be a huge help.

Last weekend was Lowell Open Studios and it was great. Exhausting, but great. I had to move a lot of stuff out of my studio, and rearrange everything to make room for my paintings and those of a friend, Nadia Richman, so it was 2 days of work before I even opened the door. Nadia came up from Brighton to show some of her work. That's her on the left in front of her paintings. It was great to be able to spend so much time with Nadia - we've been friends for over 20 years, from our days as single bartenders in Boston, through marriage, career, motherhood, and both of our journeys into art. Nadia has always encouraged me to go back to art and I thank her for that. She's an amazing woman - the mother of 4 smart, talented, wonderful children and somehow managed to squeeze painting in while raising her kids and working.

Annie Cronin was there too handing out her gluten-free goodies (excellent chocolate chip cookies on Sat and unbelievably good focaccia on Sun). She is a gluten-free consultant who helps restaurants develop gluten-free menus and people who are newly diagnosed with celiac learn to shop and cook in a new way. She is my neighbor and close friend who feeds me her good food and listens to me and is always there for me. Annie was the sales woman, she literally coaxed people into the studio from the hall with "Hi, would you like a chocolate chip cookie?" and then proceeded to introduce Nadia and me and our paintings, while we sat there like lumps smiling a lot. It's hard to "sell" your own stuff.

The three of us had so much fun and I'm so glad they were there!

I didn't sell anything, a couple of people came by and asked about my painting of the glass salt shaker "Lonely Shaker" that they had seen on the LOS web site, but I gave that to my father. (no...oops...forgot...A prominent Florida collector bought it to add to his collection).

I got a call from a friend who had stopped by with her boyfriend and she said that he was interested in my wetlands painting "The Sentinel" but I haven't heard back so not sure if he is going to buy it.

Here's how the studio looked that day. I framed and hung some paintings, and others I put on table stands. Sunday night I put everything back together again and rearranged so that I can do the monthly first Saturday Open Studios without having to spend two days of preparation. Next one is actually tomorrow - so I have to go there tonight and re-hang my paintings and finish cleaning up. ugh. But hopefully after tonight I'll be set.