Yesterday we had a fantastic time cruising along the coast exploring the South Coast Artists' Open Studio Tour. Artists all along the coast from Tiverton, Little Compton, Westport, and Dartmouth open their studios for the weekend and invite folks in to see their work. What a great excursion! Hubby's sister came along with us, and since they have a second weekend of this event coming up in August, we decided to split the tour and do half this time (Westport and Dartmouth) and then visit the others in Tiverton and Compton next month--which I just realized there are WAY more studios to come next month...We stopped at fourteen different studios yesterday--and there are over fifty studios that participate! Fortunately next month's are all a lot closer to each other (You can download a copy of the tour brochure and studio map here.) We met some crazy talented artists (and a bunch of cute little dogs!), saw some amazing, inspiring work, and I basically drooled over some of the studio spaces--wow....These three were by far my favorites (you can click on each name to go to their websites and see the amazing work they do):
Michele Bailey
Debra Lee Valeri of Meadowbrook Studio
Amy Thurber of Doves Foot Pottery
Michele plays with a bunch of different media from pastels and watercolors to oils and creates some beautiful pieces inspired by the pond where she lives. Debra's oils are breathtaking. She paints absolutely gorgeous land and seascapes from around Westport that you just have to see to appreciate--beautiful! And Amy--this was our favorite stop of the day. Our feet were barely on the ground, stepping out of the car, and her husband was offering samples of their wine--AND! Their twelve pet chickens were just running about here and there in the gorgeous backyard--so cool! But Amy creates this gorgeous, one-of-a-kind pottery with leaf impressions from their garden--just wow! Absolutely incredible pieces! They had a little tent set up with clay for the kids to play and experiment with, but Michael was having more fun feeding crackers to the chickens-gotta love it! Definitely looking forward to the second half of the tour next month!
So, hot as it's been here, I have to say it's not been my most productive week...Rather too awful to feel like doing much of anything. But, I did get to playing with a handful of recycled postcards for this week's Mail Art Monday:
The top four are all made with pages torn out of an old book--which seriously feels like blasphemy to me--it about rips my soul to tear a page out of a book, but I've loved seeing other people's work done on old book pages so I had to try it...The first three are simple doodles with Neocolor II's, then a little collage with Washi tape and an old photo from the same book. All were mounted onto cardboard from a Bush's Bake Beans box that was headed for the recycle bin. The last one was actually left over from National Letter Writing Month. Bug 'n I had made up a few recycled postcards (I can't remember what we used for the backing) but I've had this last card sitting around since April, so doodled it up, colored with Derwent Inktense and a little White Signo--tada! All ready to hit the mail!
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| This is just a little doodly envelope I did last week, too. |
I had hoped for a beach day this afternoon, but rain showers are now in our forecast and beach+rain=not fun, so probably gonna try to catch up on the neglected cleaning here today and play with a bit of zentangle before we have to head to Bug Man's guitar lessons later this afternoon. At least we won't be melting--thank heavens!
So, have a great Monday! Hope to see you again soon! Thanks for stopping by!
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