Brookgreen Garden's Fine Art Craft Show 6'14

Bruce and I went to Brookgreen Gardens new two day juried Fine art and Craft Show today  and I am so glad we did.

Threatening Sky

  The sky rumbled and grumbled all day, but the rain stayed away 

60 exhibitors is a lot

 for the sixty local and national artists who were juried into this two day show.

Held within the background of this beautiful nationally re-known sculpture garden

Whimsical living garden sculpture

BJ and I got to meet the known artists whose works are sold within fine art galleries across the country.

BJ chatting with Master wood carver, Timothy Bahn

There were demonstrations of pottery throwing, glass blowing, hand loom weaving and a chance to learn many of the processes used in making much of the work on display.

A Custom Quilted Kimona

There were whimsical items, art for the garden, custom commissioned artwork, and hand loomed wearable art on display.

BJ chatting with fiber artist Amy Bowden

Bruce bought me several original knitwear items from the very creative fiber artist Amy Bowden.  Now I can really look snazzy when we go to art events.

What are those pink flowers? 4 '14

  "What are those pink flowers?" a friend from the West coast wrote.  "They're azaleas",  I wrote back... but wait I thought... I don't know if she will believe that answer.   It's a good question to keep in mind when one is attempting to paint a scene the viewer might never have experienced. I grew up in the wide open ( but arid) spaces of the west coast myself.  A large azalea on the west coast might reach two foot tall and three foot wide.  Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I might have suspected that  the profusion of vegetation was a bit overstated  if not outright fabricated.  Let me assure you, it is neither. 

Small Part of Brookgreen Gardens' Pine forest in Spring

The sheer size of the flowering plants  in Spring can be overwhelming.  In the older established gardens, the azaleas can reach twenty feet, and the flowering trees are taller.

The photo below will give you some sense of the heights...  They dwarf me.

CC  with azaleas at Magnolia  Gardens

And they are everywhere

 Magnolia Gardens path

There are acres and acres of woodland paths and walks like these at at Magnolia Gardens and Brookgreen Gardens

Brookgreen Gardens walkway

Even personal gardens are a mass of blooms.

Azaleas and Dogwood  at Pawleys

 It can all be a bit overwhelming.  The sheer profusion makes it hard to  know what to focus upon, much less even get a clean photo of it.. Painting the scene becomes an exercise in deciding on what is the center of interest, and trying to remove anything in the scene that  might distract the viewers' focus.

Brookgreen Garden's Gate

The photo  above shows the garden gate where I painted the scene below.  ( en plein air not from the reference photo).  Far from being overstated, I actually had to subdue a lot of color and edit out  many shapes to keep the painting  from seeming cluttered and even garish.

My painting of "The Garden Gate"

 Maybe that is why so few artists tackle full blown flower filled  Spring landscapes.  They require hard mental work and  are very tricky to pull off well.

Easter week at CAG 3 "13

It was my turn to Gallery Sit at the Charleston Artists Guild Gallery.  So glad I had refreshed my wall with Spring flowers.  The gallery  was busy busy busy with tourists and locals who were  there to celebrate the start of Spring and Easter weekend.

Brookgreen Gardens Night of a Thousand Candles 12 '12

Once again we attended Brookgreen Gardens Annual  "Night of a Thousand Candles" Festival.
I always look forward to this holiday light extravaganza.

 I attend this festival every year in hopes of obtaining some great reference photos to use as the basis for holiday themed Nocturns I did get some good photos of the garden at night,  but this year I was a bit disappointed in the event.

For one thing, the Gardens oversold the event and it took patrons forty five minutes of stop and go driving just to get from the front gate to the parking lot.

Then the  the gardens themselves seemed a lot sparser this year than last. I understand the need for pruning overgrown plants, but why not wait until after their major event of the season is over, or at least fill the barren beds with  some annuals .They had also changed the light displays so that they seemed  quite similar from one garden area to the next.  Bruce liked that, but I thought it monotonous. I liked it better in previous years when there were more areas with colored lights

Of course there were the usual selections of wandering bagpipers, Celtic musicians, bell ringers etc.

and some beautiful  holiday floral displays.But many of those were things I could have enjoyed just as well by daylight. So I am hoping that next year the garden flower beds will be planted  and lit as well as their indoor displays were this year.

Angel Oak Tree Aug 8 '10

Today we visited the Angel Oak Tree on John's Island, SC. 
Charleston art galleries say paintings of this icon of the South are very popular with tourists.

The Angel Oak Tree is a Southern live oak located in Angel Oak Park, on Johns Island near Charleston. The Angel Oak Tree is estimated to be in excess of 1500 years old, stands 66.5 ft tall, measures 28 ft  in circumference, and produces shade that covers 17,200 square feet. From tip to tip Its longest branch distance is 187 ft. There is no way these facts can do this ancient giant justice.  Only when I was standing beneath its gnarled arms did I appreciate just how magnificent and special this tree is.

 The Angel Oak Tree is thought to be one of the oldest living things in the country. Standing below it  one gains a sense of how god must view time. The land where the Angel Oak Tree stands was part of Abraham Waight's 1717 land grant.  The Angel Oak's name can be traced back to the original owners Martha and Justis Angel. The tree and surrounding park have been owned by the city of Charleston since 1991. The Angel Oak is located at 3866 Angel Oak Road on Johns Island, SC

 Development is beginning to encroach on the site of the Angel Oak. In 2012, plans to build a 500-unit apartment complex that would be as close as 160 yards (150 m) to the Angel Oak. While the Oak is not in danger of being cut down, arborists caution that  the surrounding forest protects itst giant root system, shelters it from storms, affords if moisture and drainage, and filters out harmful pollutants before they reach the trees roots. The proposed development will be challenged in court by the  Coastal Conservation League, based upon concerns about the construction's effect on available groundwater and nutrients . 

Swan Lake Arts and Crafts Show 5 '10

Sumter, SC has been hosting and Arts and Crafts Show at its the annual Iris Festival which is held at  the local landmark Swan Lake Park.   I decided to make the event my  Artist Date for this week..

First of all I  wanted to see the Iris.  The last time I visited the gardens the Iris had not yet begun to bloom.  But they should be at their peak of bloom right now and I really wanted to get some reference photos of both the Iris and the swans.

While the iris were definitely in  full bloom, we were disappointed in how few  blooms there were growing around the lake.  The we discovered why.   It seems that the Lake's other famous attraction .. i.e. swans have a craving for iris blooms. CC  watched the hefty fella  below munch down a half dozen just while she was standing there.

No wonder the park has fencing around so many of its flowers.

My second reason for going was to scout out whether I wanted to consider an entry into  the Arts and Crafts Show in 2011. 

There were a fair number of  fine art craft vendors selling .. glass , wearable art, woodwork  and a variety of other crafts.  There was only one full time painter, and one person who had some paintings and some crafts     (below).  Both said their  low cost reproductions had sold quite well.

While we both  enjoyed the day, the  Art Craft Show itself did not seem to be the right venue for my art work..

Nancy;s Hibiscus 5 '10

Neighbor Nancy Susla asked me to take care of her hibiscus when she went North for the summer.  When she left it was struggling to survive.  Boy is she going to get a surprise when she returns home.  It has doubled in size and is full of blooms and become a subject of one of my more recent paintings

Brookgreen 4'10

 It was a beautiful Spring evening.... but what to do? A walk on the beach?? a bike ride???     

I  wound up driving to nearby Brookgreen Gardens then walking their entire formal botanical/sculpture gardens and several of the extensive trails through the old rice fields as well.    The Gardens at Brookgreen focus upon Southeastern  NA native plants…..iris and other bulbs,  azalea 3 meters tall,  wisteria, jasmine and honeysuckle vines,  dogwood, crab-apple, redbud, magnolia, tees were all in bloom.  The warm evening air was like perfume.  

  Combined with the lovely colors of the setting sun it was almost magical. 

After that we stopped at a family run oyster house.  Local oysters are available for harvesting in every month that has an ‘R’ in it, so this is the last month we will be able to get any local oysters until next September.  During the summer they ship in Gulf coast oysters from Texas, but I don’t think they taste as good.   We’d intended to just get an appetizer and go home for a supper of shrimp and grits, but after that long walk, we were famished.  We rationalized, “It IS the LAST TIME we’ll have a chance to get local oysters for a long while”; so we wound up eating an entire oyster roast dinner.  Salad, corn, boiled potatoes, and hush puppies (hp s are like  deep-fried sweet cornmeal donut holes)  were the sides that came with the meal.   It was a wonderful meal.  (I inserted  this comment on 5/3/10… “obviously this was written before the gulf  oil platform melt down.  We are being told that the  Gulf of Mexico oysters/shrimp may be oil tainted and unavailable for years, which will probably push the cost of our local SE Atlantic oysters and shrimp out of reach when they come back into season”.)  I hope not. Eating whole pots of roasted local oysters are one of the true joys of living on the East Coast

I got home at about 8pm.  I collapsed into a state of contentment on the couch and watched a PBS documentary on the life of Buddha.  It seemed a perfect way to end a perfect evening.