Monday, March 31, 2008

patio as art

Yep, I'm channeling Goldsworthy with each and every paver, shovel of dirt and cubic yard of gravel I haul into and out of my backyard. Now intimately familiar with the properties (complex) and attitudes (bad) of clay of which Napa Valley (unbeknownst to me) is famous for growing vines that grow grapes, that make wines that win awards (and taste good too, but that's someone else's blog), we've hauled so much clay out of here, I truly wonder why anyone does this professionally and why they don't charge about ten times their cost to cover this type of labor. If and when my hands and fingers recover from this amount of dirt moving, I will be so thrilled to get back to my painting.

In the meantime, I have not been idle in my artistic pursuits, lest you think I've forgotten one of my callings here in Happy Valley.
(did I say that?) I did submit for a juried space for the open studios here. I suspect that there is something highly politically sensitive with this as up until this year, open studios was not a juried event, but open to any artist with the desire to share their art and their presumably private work space with the public for a couple of weekends.( and plunk down a few hundred dollars for the honor) But, alas, this year it has become a juried event and I've submitted on time and with positive attitude. My studio space is most inappropriate for a client to see and access, so my next big push will be to find shared space with other artists whom also lack appropriate, "client friendly" studios.

One step at a time, right?
End of April is the target for the completion of the art piece, uh, patio that I mentioned. Stay tuned: I may just post a picture.