Opening 1/28/2011

 After weeks of preparation the new show is up in our little Moonlighting Gallery...Thursday night we took some of the old and put up the new...this is what it looked like before we left at the end of the night, Suzanne has a way with putting it together...

My wall after hanging on Thursday night

The night before, after the hanging, Ken's newest painting on the easel

A grouping of my paintings in the hallway

Suzanne's wall and Ken's wife, Chris's jewelry tree

Suzanne and Ken's shared wall

Ken's wall

My Fred's wall and Suzanne's furniture...

And so the day of the opening came...I spent the day at work, doing what I do to pay the bills...

A LONNG day at work, pre-opening, my little size 6 1/2 "dogs" were "barking" ...I took a photo of my poor tired feet after a long day cataloging an incoming collection from a donor (I just completed documentation of the 100th piece.) But I gotta tell ya, the Frye's are awesome boots and soooo comfortable.

The NIGHT! It looks so pretty!

Thankfully we missed the coastal storm so the weather was good, we weren't up to our eyeballs in snow (just our knees, right?), what's there, has been there for awhile with a light dusting to make it prettier...

...and the people came, filling the space with excited voices and enthusiasm...I made a "gallery playlist" on my mini and hooked up speakers for cool tunes, Moby, Grouper, Warpaint, Blur, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, TheWho, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Emily Barker, Florence and the Machine, Groove Armada, Imogen Heap, M83, Mistle Thrush, Artemis, Paul Simon, The Ravonettes, XX, Tracy Bonham, and Metric...just a mix...

Fun was had by all...it's a sweet little space, and we feel so fortunate to have a place to hang our work and to have the chance to invite friends and the community in to visit with us and see what we've been up to lately...everyone we meet loves the concept of "Moonlighting", we're working artists who work day jobs, we pool our resources and follow our bliss...

Moon paintings...

Setting Crescent Moon, January 9, 2011, acrylic wash, sumi paper on canvas, 4 x 4 inches

Full Moon at Dawn, January 9, 2011, acrylic wash, sumi paper on canvas, 8 x 8 inches

I did a little bit of painting this weekend, not as much as I wanted to because yesterday was a total wash out due to FMS symptoms that made me happy to tuck into bed for the day. It's just how it goes sometimes. I did move forward on a few paintings that I was stalled on, these two were my successes of the day. The little crescent moon came into being because of the moon I saw setting one night in a haze of cloud cover, it was creamy orange in the darkness...oy was that a pretty sight to see! No photos of the event...I just enjoyed looking at it rather than trying to fit it through a camera...some times it's just the experience that matters more...and I love the simplicity of it, sometimes I bog myself down with too much fussing around with throwing everything I've got into a painting and making a mess that I forget to keep it simple.

The dawn image is more of a fantasy, I wanted to use yellow ochre so bad one day and the canvas sat there being yellow ochre for quite a few days before I went at it with the blue and white...I added the full moon tonight...I might tinker with it a little more...or not, depends on how I feel about it later, but for now I'm glad to see that this little canvas has something on it that I'm happy with...it had something completely different on it previously (one of the not so satisfying pieces that I made go away!)

We're going to have a reception for our new work on January 28th at Moonlighting, so I need to try to finish up a few paintings, but looking at what I've got set aside, I have more than I thought...so no real panic to pull it together.