One of the joys and frustrations of gardening the dealing with the vagaries of nature — both weather and pests. The vegetable garden this year was decimated by critters, with nearly all of the peas lopped off by a lop-eared rabbit (sorry, couldn’t resist) who snuck behind the wire barricade I had in place. Corn crop will be at most 1/3 of normal from a combination of seed eaters and poor germination (bad seed?) Flower gardens on the other hand are doing wonderfully. The daylilies are scrumptious – we have a full palette range of… Read Article →
I’ve been a canoeist and kayaker since my Boy Scout days. Our pack leader usually had some sort of outing planned every month: hiking, camping, and numerous canoe trips down Michigan rivers: the Manistee, Au Sable and several others. Today I enjoy the lakes of Massachusetts and an occasional junket to the Rhode Island and Maine coasts as well as Boston Harbor. But my favorite place has to be Lake Whitehall. For starters it is close, only 15 minutes away, making it possible to sneak an hour’s paddle in after work. Even though close to… Read Article →
At the recent Paradise City art show we encountered the inlay work of Matti Laaninen, doing business as Hudson River Inlay (http:/www.hudsonriverinlay.com/). To call his work wonderful is too cliched and insufficient to describe not just the precise craftsmanship but the artistry of his designs. Some of my images can take 25 to 30 hours or more to edit — a tiny sliver of the weeks.it must take him for some of his larger pieces.. The figured maple glows in the light, simulating water ripples in some of his works, and coupled with numerous other woods (more than… Read Article →
This past weekend we went to a Paradise City art show/sale. I’ve been to numerous arts and crafts shows and have exhibited in a few but have nearly always been disappointed because they were way more crafts than arts — booth after booth of bead jewelry with only a smattering of photographers or painters. This show was clearly a cut above. My initial skepticism was fueled by the admission fee. Really? Paying $13 to shop? That fee, though still annoying, was fairly quickly relegated to the back of my mind by the quality and variety… Read Article →
I frequent an artists’ community called WetCanvas, which, despite it’s name, has areas for not just for painters but pastel artists, photographers and more. In additional to loads of posts on tips and techniques you can ask questions about the business side of art. But what most attracts me to the site is seeing such a wide variety of art and the talent that is out there. Here’s an example I stumbled on recently by Keith Murray: http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1399330 I’ve always been attracted to the realism school and this work certainly has that aspect pegged —… Read Article →
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