Remember that coffee house I mentioned on March 14th which had displays of local artists? I contacted the lady in charge of it, who said they had no openings in the forseeable future, but a few days later she inquired about a picture on my gallery website that she wanted for her husband's birthday. We made arrangements to meet at the same coffeehouse next day & presto! she had his birthday gift. It was an intriguing experience, because even had I gotten an exhibit there, it might not have resulted in a sale. So the whole thing was a pleasant surprise.

   The picture, "Sparrow Tapestry" was done in Oct. 2005 & is of a field sparrow in autumn poplar leaves. It's acrylic, pen & ink and pencil on Bristol Board, which is a thick multi-purpose drawing paper. I put a gold mat & frame on it & was pleased at the look of it. Evidently she was too and hopefully, so was her husband.

    Spring has finally arrived in Cleveland. So everyone has gone from parkas to shorts, with no jacket stops in between. I, of course, am pretending that I'm much older & wearing a windbreaker. I went to the grocery store this afternoon, which isn't really the best place for enjoying a lovely spring afternoon. Rufus needed lettuce, so the intent was to pick up just a few things which I did. But though I went later in the afternoon to avoid the after church crowd, it was still busy with people marching through the store as if they were on a mission. At one point I stepped back because a whirlpool of shopping carts was circling in the middle of the dairy aisle like sharks seeking lunch. I got out of there as soon as I could.

     I've reapplied myself to my New Year's resolution to lose weight by starting to exercise again. The sessions don't last very long because of the lingering bronchitis, but 20 minutes on the ski machine is better than nothing. On days when it's not raining, I need to go to one of the nearby walking trails for less strenuous exertion. I go back to the diabetic dr. in early June, so that only gives me 2 months to make some sort of progress.

    There's 3 paintings in various stages that I'm working on, so I'm not spending as much time online. Two of them have deadlines, though months apart, but need steady work to come out the way I envision them.  On a connected note, a friend & I went to a special exhibit at a nature center last week where I sketched & photographed the animal subjects. I'll be writing about that trip when I've edited the photos, which will hopefully be soon.

    A few more photos from the decoy show. There was quite a few sandpipers & such, which I don't believe were ever hunted & a lot of the others were mounted on blocks, so they were unusable for hunting. It seems that there is a movement towards making & viewing decoys as artwork, rather than their original purpose, which is certainly fine with me. Some of the vendors made more of an effort at a pleasing display, such as the one above, which the antique dealer made quite dramatic.

    One lady had a son who made mostly fish decoys. I suppose they would rightly be considered sculptures, as they would be useless in attracting fish. Some of them were life sized and they were all expertly carved & detailed.That's a muskie in the middle of the pic above, it was nearly a meter long & very well done. He also had some waterbugs & other small unusual creatures, but I liked the fish the best. They were one of my favorite things of the entire show.

   On Friday, as planned, I went to the decoy show at a local hotel. My main goal was to see the craft/art portion, but it was just being set up for the weekend. I recognised the layout from having been there years ago. The vintage decoy part of the show was hopping, though and I'd never been to that section, which was presented in an unusual way. People use their hotel rooms as display spaces & spectators wander from room to room, stepping in whereever a door is open. All the hotel furnishings are used, plus some folks brought stands & bookcases too. So one would walk into a room & see beds, desks, Tv tops, dressers, etc. lined with not only decoys, but prints, magazines, antique outdoorsy equipment, fishing lures, old advertising signs.

    It was a combination of art & antique show with a sportsman theme. I tried my best to overlook any obvious hunting reference, which was mostly low key anyways.The small rooms didn't really accomodate the amount of traffic streaming through them, but everyone was polite about it. There were a couple dogs among the vendors, a friendly little poodle named Buffy, a cuddly elderly labrador & an excited springer spaniel. I found their presence a bonus.

   Many of the decoys were antique & it was intriguing to see the varied styles of the carvers. It was a weird juxtaposition seeing wooden birds from the 1890's next to a sleek plastic phone on a nightstand. Some of the decoys were much larger than life size, Godzilla ducks, I called them. Supposedly ducks can't distinguish size very well, but can see the huge decoys farther away. Most of the vendors were happy to answer questions & I learned a lot. Exploring this subculture was an experience and some of the decoys were definitely worth going out in a snowy afternoon.

            Happy 

    St. Patrick's Day !

   Things aren't going well.  I can't get anyone to do anything about the noise from the neighbors upstairs. The loud buzzing alarm is now joined with extended vacuuming in the wee hours, multiple times a day, often beginning at 3:30 am. The police tell me to contact the condo board, the board tells me to call the police, their landlord doesn't think it's a problem. None of them are trying to function on a few hours of interrupted sleep per night.

    The CD with my entries I sent to Louisiana State University's Animals in Art  Exhibit didn't work on their computer, so my work wasn't even judged. This past week, all 3 of my entries were rejected in a local show.

     The brakes need to be repaired on my car, which probably won't be done in time to go to a wildlife exhibit at a nature center with a friend on Tuesday. Hopefully we can reschedule. And to top it all off, I'm a year older as of Friday. The actual birthday was quite nice, a good dinner, lots of fun gifts, numerous well wishes in ecards & paper ones.  Turned out to be of my better birthdays, really.

     I'm trying not to get depressed about all the things going wrong, but it's not really working. I tried venting to my mother about it, but apparently she skipped that chapter in the Mothering Guidebook, so I'm forced to turn to strangers on the internet for a boost. How sad is that? Aauugh!

    Last Saturday was my mother's birthday, but the celebration lasted all weekend. My sister had a severe migraine which delayed her participation, but I tried to make it a festive day for my mom anyways by giving her my gifts: needlework kits & supplies, coconut candy & dinner from McDonald's which she considers a treat. A bouquet from my sister & I arrived early in the day, which moved her to tears. I was pleased with the color & variety of flowers in the bouquet, more lavish than expected, filled with carnations, lilies, iris, and delphiniums.

   On Sunday, my sister was feeling better & brought over her gifts of clothes & household items, plus the coconut pie from both of us. We took my mother to dinner at the restaruant of her choice where she had pork chops. And she declared herself pleased with all of the elements that made her birthday a good one. It was her 79th, so she wasn't looking forward to it, which is why I wanted to make it especially nice. Birthdays are not considered important in my family, except by me, I like to make it a special day filled with enjoyment. This time it worked rather well.

 Winter skies provide a constant array of greys and blues which are very pleasing. This is a photo of a recent winter afternoon, the locust tree is outside of my windows & provided contrast after a snowy day.