33rd Annual Lakewood Art Festival

Just got back from the Lakewood Art Festival. What a beautiful day and what a great show. 160 artists from around the country on the main street of downtown Lakewood...on the west side of Cleveland near Lake Erie. The crowds were HUGE. Nonstop flow of appreciative art patrons from 9 am to 6pm. The setup and tear down was easy and the show was well organized and very artist friendly.

We Gallery

This month (Aug. 2010) the WE Gallery on N. High St. Downtown Akron is featuring the work of Joseph Close, Tiffany Marsh, Marcy Axelband, and ME !! The gallery is in a hip downtown club area of Akron and is on the monthly Art Walk circuit of Akron. The gallery is run by two lovely women and is a cool happening place with a wine bar in the back, coffee house and music club in the basement, and the Akron Museum of Art across the street. The area around the gallery has several unique and upscale restaurants.

This month's show includes an eclectic mix of some outstanding artists. Joseph Close is a talented visionary painter/sculpture/poet/creative genius. His work at the show is deep...VERY DEEP... composed of found objects, fabricated metal objects, wood sculptures, paintings, and deep...did I say DEEP ....visual poetry. Joseph is an up and coming superstar in the art world. Tiffany Marsh is a talented painter and owner of Bliss Studio in Canton. Her paintings show a quiet creative spirit ranging from beautiful figurative studies to her raw and earthy abstracts that are my favorites. Macy Axelband is a deep thinking, exceptionally talented painter and owner of the DA Studio in Canton. She creates "stop you in your tracks"paintings that are more powerful than you can sometimes stand. Looking at her paintings sometimes forces you to look deeply into yourself as you are absorbing their power and beauty. And of course I'm there...you know me... with several of my larger paintings.

The We Gallery experience this month is a beautiful creative roller coaster you don't want to miss.

new small square paintings

Here are my newest and smallest mixed media pieces. These are 8 x 8 unframed squares on the cool new Ampersand Artist panels with a 1 1/2 inch profile. They have a smooth fine canvas texture and are very nice to work with. These started out with a heavy gesso texture created with a pallet knife and them layers of yellow oxide, pthalo green. pthalo blue, purple, and burnt umber with layers of gloss medium in between color pairs. After rubbing off and adding more, the final result is a nice mix of all the colors and hues created by the various colors.