Wandering Artist's Journal

Reno is Artown! It's pretty great all year 'round, but the entire month of July is insane, with 10 to 20 art events every single day! Get the full schedule here (click on the calendar date-by-date for events & activities.) I'm just dipping my toe in this year, participating n a few events and getting around to some of the others as a visitor.  Saturday, July 9th:  yART Sale , 9am-4pm, 1420 Mt. Rose St., West of Marsh Avenue I’ll be showing some of my paintings there with 25 other artists, including Lynne Bunt (mixed media), Brenda Retterer (glass painting), and Craig Johnson (knots & bolts) Other Artown venues that carry some of my paintings: Micano Home , 1350 S. Virginia St., Reno, NV 10am-6pm, Sat-Thur (closed Friday) I’ll be at the Art, Wine & Music event Micano is hosting on Saturday, July 30th, 1pm-6pm Loorr Home , 3368 Lakeside Ct, Reno, NV 11am-6pm, Tue-Sat (closed Sun & Mon) Fred & Wilma’s Rock Quarry , ...

"Tempus Fugit" (Time Flies) acrylic on canvas, mounted on hinged wooden panels © Anna L. Conti April 1st, 2nd & 3rd , 2016 Luna Maya Markets  ** at 1644 South Wells Avenue, in Reno (across from the Wells traffic circle and next to Cafe DeLuxe ) BigCrow  will  host  a booth at the new monthly Plaza Maya Markets. Stop by Friday 5-8pm, Saturday 3-8pm, Sunday 12-5pm. There will be food, drinks, music and of course ART! Anna  will be showing some of her paintings;  Eoghan  will be making and selling his earrings; and we have a secret guest artist. **  Luna Maya Markets  is a new community art, performance & gathering space and they have a great lineup of activities the first weekend of every month. Please stop by!

The afternoon started with a visit to Project Artuad and the studio of painter E. Dale Erickson . His latest painting is a realist image of a window at SFMOMA, inspired by Frank Stella's early minimalist paintings - the ones with a strong vertical rectangle and horizontal bars. (Sorry, I couldn't find a good example on the web.) Dale's painting is on the easel in the photo above. Video of him explaining his new palette lifter is here . Next we stopped off at the studio of Maude "Bones Are My Business, Baby" Kirk , to gift her with a baby bird corpse that she will undoubtedly turn into something beautifully gruesome. She's currently working on a series of Goya-homage commissions. In the hall we noticed this painting by resident artist, Bern Rauch : "afterimage in the eyes of the prey" (below) Onward to Philz Coffee at Folsom & 24th Street , were we waited for the rest of the gang to catch up with us. As always, Philz was comfortable, friendly, ...

June flew by - I had an art opening at HANG (two pieces in their "Alumni" show) the first week, then Dave had a couple of days of treatment at Kaiser, then we left for Seattle - 22 hours on Amtrak, in coach. We went up there to see our nephew's graduation, and we stayed about a week, visiting with family and seeing some art in the area. Seattle had great weather, water all around, gold-rush history, good food, bookstores, coffee houses, lots of artists. I liked the city - it's basically a smaller version of San Francisco. And I like the emphasis on craft in the Seattle art world. The best gallery I saw on this trip: Greg Kucera . The best art show: Sherry Markovitz at Greg Kucera and the Bellevue Art Museum . Then the 22 hour return trip. It was grueling - not as bad as I'd feared, but bad enough that I don't want to do it again. Maybe if I won the lottery or something and could get a sleeper cabin it might be OK. The other nephew graduates in three ye...

In 1992, I met Sherry Miller via "Women's Wire" (a pre-web internet service.) Sherry is an artist and a trickster and she was responsible for steering me back into art. My path had evolved from a promising alternate route into a stumble through the brambles. After watching her, and listening to her bon mots, I found a way to the Land of Oz, where I've been happily working ever since. Sherry, self-described as "the oldest woman on the web," has started a blog , which I added to the sidebar, and she has an Open Studio coming up: Open Studio - Saturday and Sunday, May 12 & 13; 11-6 pm Industrial Center Building Studio 259D 480 Gate Five Road Sausalito CA 94965 From 101 Southbound take Sausalito/Marin City exit. Turn left. Go underhighway. Turn right at light onto Bridgeway. From 101 Northbound take Sausalito/Marin City exit. Go straight on Bridgeway. At third light turn left on Harbor Drive. Third gray building on the left.

I first saw Anne Subercaseaux 's work at the SOMA artists' studios (which, incidentally is having a Spring Open studios event later this month.) Excellent painting - she pares down to the essence in terms of shape & line, then goes all out with the color. In reproduction, the colors look muted and restrained, but in the presence of the paintings, the colors are deeply alive. Her show is up this month at the Newmark Gallery - I made a little video of the opening, including some comments by the artist and a couple of randomly selected viewers:

Trillium Press is now Electric Works and they're in their new location at 8th & Mission. It's a cool old building, which Electric Works is still renovating. They have a big gallery on the first floor - photos at their Flickr site. (Image above is William Wiley signing prints for Yale Art Gallery, Electric Works founding partner Richard Lang turning prints.) Also moving into the South of Market Area is Catherine Clark Gallery . They'd been at 49 Geary for 12 years. Their new space (like Electric Works, it's street level) is located at 150 Minna Street, between 3rd and New Montgomery Streets, and adjacent to the Saint Regis Hotel and the SFMOMA. They open at the new location in May. There's an entrance from Mission street, between the Cartoon Art Museum and MoAD . Catherine Clark has also started a blog and a Flickr site. (Image below is the Last First Thursday Event at 49Geary - Work by Masami Teraoka. Photo by Rhiannon MacFadyen .)