The Art Dept

 Here’s my illustrated journal entry for today: It’s all about sunflowers and gratefulness and what one has to do with the other. It started two weeks ago when I visited a local produce market for pumpkins and squash, and noticed they have a giant field of sunflowers. It was a yummy autumn day, and I was allowed to take pictures of the flowers.      I am also part of a 30 day photo challenge online where every day there is a topic, and today’s topic was gratitude. Wow, where to begin? There’s so much to be grateful for. I just heard a minister teach on God is light. He shared how a sunflower literally turns its head from east to west in the course of a day to follow the light, and at night reorients itself so that it will face east in the morning again. I’m speechless at the beauty and simplicity of that analogy. That God designed that into nature. That He invented sunflowers to follow the light. That as a follower of  God and His Word I can do the same thing. A...

 Suddenly it's Autumn! Here's what that means to me:  Filling up my illustrated journal with sketches and paintings from my gardens Getting new art supplies watching the leaves as they  dance and flutter to the ground and attempting to capture it in watercolor Starting a fire in the woodstove next to my watercolor table and setting my coffee on top and last but not least, offering workshops in my art studio for fall and winter. Click here for the calendar Mask up and come make art!

     “I made this for you before we met!” It’s one of my favorite comments when I’m at an art show with my Parts of Art jewelry. It happens at least once at every show: that piece that, after I designed and built it in the studio, and afterwards thought “O my God, who would ever want this? What was I thinking? Am I out of my mind?” Then I put it out there and sooner or later she comes along, spots it, and it is clearly, unquestionably made just for her. It’s the one aspect of doing shows that I love and dearly miss.       I have recently become a vendor at the Alexandria farmers and artists market in my little rural town. It’s literally the only gig in town, and all my actual juried art shows have been cancelled. So it happened, albeit with face masks and social distancing intact. Here she came, it was made for her, and it happily went from my neck to hers. Want to see what I made just for you? Visit my shop at Sandyartparts.etsy.com

All my shows for 2020 have been cancelled, so I am taking an unplanned and unexpected break til next year.      I totally miss being at shows, meeting my customers, making connections with other artists, selling jewelry pieces I had made over the winter, staying in budget hotels and Airbnb’s, listening to books on CD on the road, eating Reese’s peanut butter cups on the way home, finding hidden neighborhoods in towns all over the Midwest, and telling my story of Parts of Art to anyone who came in the booth.  What I don’t miss is getting lost on the way to a show in spite of Google maps, holding down my tent with both hands during a sudden windstorm, arriving at my Airbnb the night before the show and realizing it’s in the roughest side of town, getting my tent all set up and realizing I forgot all my display fixtures, having to have homeless people vacate the spot where my booth goes, having a reaction from eating undercooked or overcooked food truck food, not having...

   When my husband and I visited Bavaria in celebration of our 40th anniversary, we spent a few days in a delightful garden cottage in Gebsattel. Right outside the door was a patch of fragrant blossoming bushes that were absolutely populated with butterflies.     The whole garden space was alive, not only with plants, but with the fluttering activity of glorious winged creatures that covered the many blooms. I was inspired by this sight and wanted to capture it with my camera for future paintings. I determined that, once stateside, I would find out whatever this exotic flowering bush was.   Come spring, I started my quest to identify the flower. At my local nursery I showed the picture to the gardener. Her reply?  "I have no idea what the plant is, but the photograph is beautiful! You should be an artist!"        I chose not to go into detail about how I AM an artist, and that's the whole point here. That by then I had done sketches...

Yes, it’s an Indiana thing.  And in my salsa garden, the time is now. This is a recent entry in my illustrated garden journal.  And here’s tonight’s dinner:  Green Tomatoes paintings are available at my shop  here              

Want to learn how to paint right from the garden? Watch here as a garden grows on watercolor paper right before your eyes!  We have some classes and workshops coming up soon.  Stay tuned right here  for our class schedule.