Thursday, February 14, 2008

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Sometimes I get so busy I completely forget what I'm doing. Case in point, did you know that I joined a brand new group of encaustic artists here in North Texas? I missed the first meeting, and Saturday is the second meeting. There's also a photography convention on Saturday and I had signed up for an all day workshop on enhancing photos using Photoshop and Painter. When Deanna Wood, founder of our new wax group announced that guru encaustic artist and author Joanne Mattera would be here for our meeting I promptly canceled my computer class.

One of my goals has long been to get more involved in my local art community and this is a great way to get started. Texas WAX (including me) will be holding an exhibition next week in collaboration with the weekend meetings of CAA and Women's Caucus for Art. My friend Cheryl McClure will also be showing. It will be nice to see her, too. We last met up when Nita Leland was in town for a workshop. The three of us had dinner.

I've been printing most of the day. I will be SO glad to deliver these huge prints (4' x 5') on Monday. That gives me the weekend for the ink to cure and three coats of varnish.

Lost out on a project this week, but it was so fast I barely noticed. I think it was a 5 day turnaround between the day I submitted concepts to today when I found out we lost. That's amazing in a world where I have submitted for projects that are under construction and won't even be completed until next year! Historically the hotel business has a long lead time. Unless somebody messed up and there's an art emergency. I've certainly benefited by that a few times.

Got another hit of that "is this my destiny" question when I found out that a new project is a local Embassy Suites. If it's the one on Stemmons, that would be too coincidental, since I did stained glass ceilings for that hotel in the early eighties. And I didn't even live here then. I really must be in my groove. Those years as a commercial real estate paralegal and contract administrator were just a side path that brought me right back here. Funny world.

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