My new "art life" in Michigan

One of my biggest fears of moving from Arizona to Michigan was that my art life would die.  I was well established in the Tucson art community.  I was blessed to have so many places to show my paintings and a group of supportive artist friends.  I had name recognition and people liked and bought my art.  I was afraid that I would not have the same opportunities here living in a mid-west farming community that I had living in metropolitan Tucson.  I am happy to say I was wrong....I was really wrong. By doing some Internet research I found out there is a strong flourishing art community here with many opportunities.  I am beginning to meet other artists and do some networking and getting a lot of information.  I want to share with you the saga of how things are progressing.

  We made the move in September 2015 and until the beginning of 2016 I was busy unpacking and settling in. After the first of the year I started to look for places to show my art. If you read my posts in January you know I won an award and sold a painting at the Carnegie Center for the Arts and became a member of the Three River Artist Guild.  That was step 1 in my new Michigan art life.

Around Valentine's day I found out about the Vicksburg Cultural Arts Center.   I applied and became a Member and am now showing my art in the gallery.

 In the month that I have been there I have met some wonderful artists and art lovers.  An example is what happened this past weekend.  I did an art demo during an open house at the gallery.  Two of the people I met were Isobel and Coco.  Izzy is a precocious 7 year old who did a hands-on project.  I wish I had taken some photos of the canvas painting she did.  At 7 she is already a talented artist.  She said she thought she would be an artist when she grew up.  I told her she had no choice because she already was an artist.

Then there was Coco.  I was introduced to her and when she was looking through my album of paintings she spotted my painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  It turns out that she did a pastel of the Virgin that was accepted in the KIA West Michigan Show and had a necklace with an image of the Virgin that she was wearing.  Oh, I didn't mention that Coco is originally from Mexico.  She had been admiring my paintings and decided to buy White Roses in Talavera Vase.

Coco has her own gallery and studio just a block away from the VCAC and invited me to visit her there when I was done with my demo.  I did just that and when I walked into her gallery I felt I was in Tucson again.  The Mexican influence was everywhere.  Here art work is beautiful and I invite you to visit her website at www.cocosweezy.com.  She also has a huge personal art collection of paintings done by artists from around the world.  I am honored to have one of my creations join her collection.  We talked for a long time and she shared a lot of information with me.  I hope this will be the beginning of a long friendship.

I mentioned the Kalamazoo Institute for the Arts up coming show.  I also had a painting accepted. It is Paisley aka Persian Pickles

There is more....the first time I visited the gallery I met Dina Hadley who makes pottery.  Not long after I joined she commissioned me to do a painting of a dragonfly.  I call it Dragonfly Beauty.

I love Dina's pottery so I suggested we do a trade....pottery for painting.  She agreed.  Here is a photo of the pots on display in my home. I love the way they match the painting in the background.

The doors keep opening up for me.  A few weeks ago we decided to go to lunch at LA's Cafe which is  a coffee shop/internet cafe here in Three Rivers.  It is a quaint place that is built right over one of the rivers.  I noticed they had local artists' art on the walls.  When the owner came to our table to  introduce himself I asked about showing my work and he and his wife said yes.  I have 6 paintings hanging there.  I took a photo of two of them.  I also want to mention their food is delicious.  Everything is natural and fresh.  We plan to eat there often. Here is a photo of two of the paintings that I am showing.

Some of the other places I have been told to look into are the Kalamazoo Art Hop which is the first Friday of the Month.  The other is Art Prize which is in Grand Rapids and happens every fall.  It is the most attended art event on the planet.  Last year it had 162 venues, 1,550 artist and over 400,000 people attending.  They award $500,000 in prize money.  WOW!  I am impressed.  I am too late to apply for this year but will certainly try next year. In the mean time I have to get to work painting to build up an inventory.  Looks like I will be as busy here as I was in Tucson.

My new workshop/studio is almost complete.  It is usable and Dina's painting is the first one that I did there.  I will have a drop ceiling and new lighting installed soon.  This post is pretty long so I will do another post soon featuring photos of my new work space soon.