Had a wonderful visit to the very nice Cole Gallery. I remembered it fondly from my last visit.
At the time, they had a great show of artist Michael Fitzpatrick. Love it!! This is some of the work that I have actually been up close and personal to for quite a while that I have enjoyed the most! I look at lots of work online and in magazines but to see the paint smears and edges was quite a treat and I really enjoyed the playful young women subjects. Very appealing.
I had a good chat with the owner and she says figurative art is their number one selling genre. Very interesting as that is not what I hear from most galleries or many of my figurative artists. Michael Maczuga is their best selling artist, very nice work.
They will be hosting a nice 3 day workshop with painter Ilene Gienger-Stanfield. The workshop is The Figure in the Environment, November 2-4.
What a wonderful artist work space I found here! ArtsWorks is a converted big old garage that is now a shared artist workspace and also holds classes and meeting. Wow, every town would LOVE to be able to have something like this! For $5 artists can come in and set up with the tables, easels and bring in their own paints and canvases and just get down and dirty with their work! This is important, especially for those who just do not have space to work at home. Nifty!!
Another shared workspace I stumbled across was Embellished. A bit like Raw Canvas in Vancouver, this space gets users to pay a set fee then use canvases and paints, tables, easels, aprons, etc provided by the space. BUT the big difference with this space is that users are guided step-by-step through the process of reproducing an exact image of their choice from samples up on the wall. This is a great idea for newbies and people who just want some artsy fun. Their selling line is “Paint a little, wine a bit, laugh a lot”. Sounds like a fun place to go with a group. You can also work on your own image too of course but doing the guided thing would be a great place for some people to just get their feet wet in the art department, not the place for serious artists.
Edmonds has some very good public art, they must have had a very generous town council to provide all this. Some of my favorites were decorated sidewalks and bronze sculptures down by the waterfront and a textured cement seating wall right at the water’s edge, Sidewalk Elements by Bruce Myers. Very smart and handsome.
Of course no trip to Edmonds would be complete without stopping in at Rick Steve’s Europe through the Back Door. Rick Steves is a very down to earth fellow whose passion for travel has lead him to a very successful career in the travel industry. He has great TV series and wonderfully well-thought out travel product line. We already have a couple of his larger backpacks but Dennis got a slightly smaller one this time and thinks it will come in handy. At 2 pounds, it’s already one pound less than our existing bags.
What a glorious long pier they have here! I walked out in such warm balmy pinky evening light and watched hypnotizes as the fishers coaxed and teased and caressed the water with their spinning reels and jigging lines. One young fellow had a lovely silvery salmon wrapped up in some newspaper, ready to take home as his prize! How exciting! We never really fish, we only drop crab and prawn traps and I can see the lure of the lures as they wave their magic wands zinging through the air in hopes of catching the BIG one. Even little ones are useful – as bait for the big ones! What fun!
Published on: Oct 9, 2012