Bell's Tavern / Faces and Places reprise

"Coryell Sunset"
16x20 oil on panel

Through the month of October, I'm showing my paintings at Bell's Tavern in Lambertville along with J. Stacy Rogers. Stacy and I basically took our 2-man show, Faces & Places, on the road and moved our paintings from the Artists' Gallery to Bell's on Monday. So if you missed our show at the Artists' Gallery, here's your chance to see it while enjoying a good meal at Bell's. There's a pretty good beer selection on tap too. I'm also showing a couple of Lambertville townscapes that were not part of Faces & Places, so it won't be exactly the same show.

"Behind the Prallsville Mill"
10x8 oil on canvas on panel

Bells' has been showing local artists' works for many years and once again, I'm grateful for the opportunity they've given us:

Bell's Tavern
183 North Union Street
Lambertville, NJ 08530
[map & directions]

Open for dinner only:
Mon-Thurs 6pm-9:30pm, Fri & Sat 5pm-10pm, Sun 5pm-9pm

Tagged!

I've been tagged Tracy Helgeson. Tagged? This is new to me but apparently it means, that I link back to Tracy (done), post 7 things that people don't know about me, list 7 blogs that I like, and let those 7 bloggers know they've been tagged.

Posting 7 things about myself, which might possibly be of interest to anyone... this will be tough, but here it goes:

1. I never knew what I wanted to do in life, so after high school I went to a community college to study architecture. I picked that because I really liked the mechanical drawing classes I had in high school. I had a lot of interests, but absolutely no direction I wanted to go in.
   
2. With a 2 year architecture degree, I still didn't know what I wanted to do. So instead of continuing that line of education, I bicycled across the USA: 3 months and 4500 miles of cycling coast to coast from Virginia to Oregon with 8 other people. (I flew back home.) We carried everything we needed with us: tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, everything. It was the best experience of my life!
3. I've always had some artistic hobby: painting, ceramics, woodworking, bonsai, wine making, music - I play guitar, and compose music on the computer.
4. I am a social recluse - not a good trait for an artist trying to make a name for himself.
   
5. I make wine, but never from grapes. I figure there are thousands of wineries out there making wine from grapes, I have no interest in doing the same. But, I've been curious about dandelion wine ever since I read Ray Bradbury's book "Dandelion Wine", so eventually I learned to make my own. I've made wine from dandelions, apples, honey (mead), wild raspberries that grow in my back yard, tea (you can make wine from almost anything!), mint (okay, that one is a little weird but it's nice in the summer), and I may try making an oregano wine this year - that will be for cooking with, not drinking.
   
6. In 2nd grade I played Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. I had one line: "God bless us all" which I delivered while standing on one leg.
7. I still don't know what I want to do with my life, but now I'm pretty sure it has something to with painting.

Seven blogs that I like:

1. The Artists Gallery Blog - I hope this isn't too self-indulgent - I do all the posting to this blog, but it's full of news from our art gallery and it's 18 members. We're an artists' cooperative, and it's a great bunch of people, so it's a pleasure for me to be running this blog and posting news about the successes of my fellow gallery members.
2. Deb Trotter - Cowboy's Sweetheart - I met Deb in one of Alyson B. Stanfeld's e-classes. I love Deb's Western Art with a sense of humor.
3. William Wray - this guy's plein-air work is pretty amazing. His gritty scenes of urban decay are very far removed from my tranquil landscapes, but he's got a way with the brush and I love how he finds beauty in such very ordinary scenes. A quote from his own website sums it up: "if Thomas Kincaid is the painter of light, I'm the painter of blight".
4. Peinando letras (Combining Letters) - This might be weird because this blog is in Spanish and I can't read Spanish, but I love looking at this blog. The imagery is really great.
   
5. Jan Blencowe - Art & Life - Jan is a plein air painter who's work I really like.
6. Danny Griego - Artist - Dan is another painter of urban California scenes, like William Wray, but stylistically pretty different. Maybe I need to move to California since I like this type of artwork so much.
   
7. Scott Adams - The Dilbert Blog - Okay, it's not an a visual arts blog, but it one of my favorites. Scott Adams has such a unique way of looking at the world. If you look beyond the humor, you sometimes find some seriously good ideas there. And sometimes it's just plain funny.

Now I'll go let these bloggers know they've been tagged.

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Things Google

I'm a big fan of Google and all of the services they offer for free. Of course they only offer things for free because in the long run, it generates revenue for them through their AdWords / AdSense pay-per-click advertising systems. But I'm still glad they offer such great services for anyone to use. Two things in particular that I like:

Google Gadgets: Gadgets are little frames of dynamic html that can be embedded in any webpage, and can be used to display almost anything: clocks, calendars, stock quotes, news feeds, maps, etc. The offer a lot of gadgets ready to use, or you can create your own. I created one to show a random image from my painting archives. You can see a small version of it in my sidebar. Anyone is free to use this gadget in their own website or blog if they wish to, just follow these instructions. It can be customized to display at any size you wish. I doubt if anyone but me will ever use it, but it was fun to make.

Google Calendar: Google's new calendar system is pretty slick. I used to use Yahoo's calendar for my personal use, but recently switched to Google's. I like how I can have multiple calendars in my account - one for my private life, which only I can see, and one for my art events, which the general public can see. Once nice feature is that public calendars can be embedded in any webpage - I added my Art Events Calendar my sidebar, so anyone can see what shows I have coming up. Anyone who uses Google Calendar for their personal use can easily add my public Art Events to their own calendar. (Of course, I'll need to become famous before anyone would want to do that, but I'm ready!)