Mary Nasser's Map Stencil Blog Hop!

Today's blogpost is dedicated to Mary Nasser's Blog Hop! Mary Nasser designed some new Map Stencils for Stencil Girl Products aka (Mary Beth Shaw) and she asked me join her blog hop with some other pretty amazing creatives. This blog hop is kind of a group creative party through these here internets where we are celebrating the birth of Mary's awesome Map Stencils that SHE designed. How awesome is that?! The best part is that if you make a comment, you get a chance to win a set of her stencils and one of the paintings I made with her stencil.

For this blog hop, I decided to make a simple abstracted landscape painting using Mary's map stencil, Wood Icing texture paste and Golden Acrylics on 3/4" medium density fiberboard.

Prepping the boards with gesso.

Applying first thing layer of Wood Icing texture paste.

Applying second layer of Wood Icing using Mary's Map Stencil. Isn't her stencil just lovely?

Pulling stencil away.

I added a little thread of texture with the Wood Icing and a small pallet knife. I also added two layers with Mary's Stencil, just to see what would happen.

I added a thread of Wood Icing with a small pallet knife and I added some extra free form texture in the top half of the painting.

Time for color!

And we are finished!

I made two so I could give one to one lucky commenter and so I could give one to Mary. 

Yep, that's what I said. If you make a comment here on my blog, I'll have my own drawing by Mary's same deadline and the lucky winner gets one of these 6"x6" paintings. The other painting is for you dear sweet Mary Nasser. Thank you for asking me to participate in this super awesome blog hop!

Mary Nasser will be giving away a set of her four new map stencils to one lucky winner! ALL of the readers who comment on each blog hop participants' posts will be eligible for the drawing. The only thing you have to do is leave a comment by 11:59PM Central Time on October 4th. The more blogs you comment on in the blog hop, the more chances you have of winning!

Here is the complete list and links of all of the participants. 

Happy clicking for inspiration and prizes!

StencilGirl Talk

Mary C. Nasser
Mary Beth Shaw

Jessica Sporn

Janet Joehlin
Heather Haymart -you are here

Judy Shea

Pam Carriker

Nancy Wethington

Corrine Gilman

Rose Wilde

Nancy Curry

Kristen Powers

Carolyn Dube

Maria McGuire

Cox Gallery Exhibit at William Woods University



It feels really phenomenal to attain one of  your goals. Saturday, the show was hung and looked great. It was then, that I felt finished. Art receptions make me a nervous wreck, so after completing the paintings and hanging them, I felt I had accomplished my goal. The reception was so very nice and I received lots of complements which always embarrasses me into a hand wringing mess, but I persevered. My family was there with me and that was very comforting. Sunday, once the reception and demo/talk was over, I had to leave my paintings there and that might have been the hardest part. I have definitely become attached to them, but they look great where they are and we will be picking them up in a month. This has been an amazing, creative experience for me and I wouldn't have traded it for the world. I would like to do another exhibit like this, but I think I will aim for 2015 for the next one.

 

In future posts I will talk about the paintings I made, but for now, I will let my pictures tell the rest of the story....

 

This is the sign outside the main entrance to the Cox Gallery.





Doorway into the gallery with our poster!

 

This is the main view of the gallery with mine and Chris's glass work. I thought our work looked beautiful together.



Here is another view with just the spot lights on.

Me and Chris McCarthy - he owns Park Avenue Glass in St. Louis

Chris's beautiful glass.

The two people responsible for me getting to have this exhibit.
My mother in law, Cathy, who gave Jennifer Sain, the gallery director, my card!



Four generations of creatives! My mom, Rose Wilde, my grandma and my daughter.

 

Talking about my process with close family friend, Herman.



Cool gallery photo by my hubby Ben. I think that is my brother and my mom in the middle.

"The Inside Scoop" Artist Talk/Demo - My hands were shaking like crazy!

The little painting I was demonstrating on.

Chris and I just received an e-mail from Jennifer (the gallery director) and she gave me goosebumps. She said, "The show is commanding rave reviews from faculty, staff and students.  Thank you for sharing your work with us!  Showing your work together creates depth of perspective…  I call it a vibrant calm like sitting in the sun with eyes closed, resting the soul." Thank you Jennifer.

Lucky Art Party at Wood Icing

I wear many hats in this artistic life. It keeps me very busy and sometimes I feel frustrated about that fact and then I give myself a good smack and remind myself that everything I am doing is related to what I love. Art. This is a dream I get to live and my "busy" is self imposed by my passion.



Mary Nasser giving her arty gift to my good friend Tricia and that's me talking with my good friend Beth behind them.

The latest thing that kept me busy was our art reception at Wood Icing. I manage the gallery and the artists, so this was my baby. My mom (my partner) did a lot, even though she would be silly and say she didn't do anything, but I spearheaded it. We have been working hard to create a place that is different than other studio/galleries. We like that our studio is visible, mess and all, we want to bring decorative and fine arts together, and we try really hard to make our place feel beautiful and inviting.


Rose Wilde (my mom) giving her Wood Icing demo.

The best part of our little shop is that we have the help of really amazing artists. They help us cover the hours, use the time to work on their art and in turn we give them lots of exhibit space. Having these talented and creative people in our space all of the time makes Wood Icing a fun place to visit because you never know what you will get to see them creating.

Kristen Powers (kae pea) giving her eraser carving demo.

The Lucky Art Party was a great success. We used two Crayon boxes to match the arty gift with the lucky winner. We went through all 64 crayons and then some so I know at least 70 people came not including artists. We also had free art demos from seven of the artists who exhibit their work in our gallery. This was a really fun night for everyone involved. I wish I could have been a guest instead of a host!

Susie Tenzer giving her arty gift to a lucky winner.



Vesna Delevska painting during the reception as our guests watch her painting transform.

Janice Scherer giving her art demo.

If you would like to see more fun photos from this night, you can visit our

Wood Icing Facebook Fan Page by clicking HERE.

We also have links to all of our artists in the gallery HERE.

From Me to We

This blog post has no art in it. I am sad about not painting lately, but I am happy with my current situation that has been taking my time away from painting. Right now I have at least five paintings in progress on my easel waiting impatiently for some much needed attention. For now though, they will remain neglected. I am not happy about this but I am not mad about it either.

What have I been doing? Well I have been working hard to be a good partner to my mom at our Wood Icing Studio and Gallery. We have re-arranged how things work at the gallery and it has increased my workload threefold, but I really love it. I have learned something about myself that I never knew. It is so much easier to promote other artists besides myself. In fact, it is fun. I always felt so self centered before and I probably still am. Aren't most artists anyway? The point is that I really enjoy promoting my artist friends that we invited to be a part of our gallery. It is very eye opening to take a moment and really focus on someone else's art for a change.

This Saturday, December 4th from 5-8pm we are hosting a reception for Liz Franklin an interior designer. I had this idea of how cool it would be to team up an interior designer, a decorative finisher and fine artists to create an amazing space in our special exhibit space in our gallery. When I brought this idea to my mom, we were off and running. We called Liz Franklin (whom we met in our gallery), Gail Strebel (a friend of my mom's), and then let Liz choose work from our gallery to use in her space. My mom and Gail went crazy with this beautiful finish and my dad was kind enough to install the walls. Liz got Dolnick's Furniture to donate furniture for the display and our artists got to be in the running for this amazing display. She chose Sharon Spillar's, Dawson Morgan's  and my art for the vignette. She might even be purchasing one of Mary Beth Shaw's paintings for a client! So my grand scheme is working! We are bringing together three creative business at our gallery which will hopefully result in more art in people's homes!

Habitat for Humanity's Artful Doors

Last Saturday Mary Beth and I met my mom out in O'Fallon to pick up doors for the Habitat for Humanity Door Project. The project was called to our attention through Evie Shucart and the Women's Caucus for the Arts. The idea is that we artists will paint a door for auction at the St. Charles Home show and the proceeds will benefit the Habitat for Humanity. My door is still sitting in the garage, but I plan to tackle it next week. I am so excited to get started. Here is a link to the video that Susan Weich from STL Today made and an article she wrote. I tried to figure out how to put the video in my post but it wouldn't work for some reason. I am the big dork in the red coat who didn't realize we were being videoed for a newspaper article. Maybe I should have paid better attention.

I can't wait to get started. My ideas keep bouncing from purely decorative, to something for a kids room, to something realistic and pretty. No matter what I know it will be a rewarding experience. I just hope someone bids on it!!!