Mainsail Art Festival

If you remember last year's Mainsail Art Festival at the Vinoy, I became a patron of the arts. I bought three paintings from Maria Pascuta and vowed I wouldn't do such a foolish and expensive thing again. Twelve months later I returned to the scene of the crime and dang if I didn't do it again.

It was a deceptively warm day. In fact there was an elderly woman who had collapsed at a tree and was visibly ill with the heat. Her daughter was rather and rightly frantic looking for help. Thankfully it came and I assume she was OK. The above pic isn't much, it just shows the layout and some folks who attended.

Mainsail is an invitational show with many repeat artists bringing their work for sale.

This guy brought his bird out. Why, I don't know. Just like the guy at the gas station who had his bird perched on his shoulder while gassing up, why do these people bring their birds? Attention? Hmmm. Questions, questions.

It is a great show with talented artists. Besides the paintings below, I also got some ceramic vase-like thing that the guy embeds leaves in before getting it fired. When it is done the imprint of the leaves is in the piece. Very nice.

Kate Carney, artist of this work posed with her painting. It is an acrylic piece, rather impressionistic of wild flowers on a black background. It appealed to me.

Here you can see her use of Bravura (bold and highly visible) strokes to get the paint onto the canvas. Her formal education was completed at the University of London and Queen's College and presently teaches and paints in a large studio in a haunted house in Eustice, Florida.

Now this piece was very cool. Artist Peggy Furlin paints watercolors onto canvas. She is the only person I have heard does this. It is time consuming and the works are colorful and different. As multiple layers of watercolor are applied, they are worked and reworked, scratched, scraped and splattered. Then they are sealed with a spray varnish and this is the result. Pretty neat, huh?

Mainsail 2013 is over and it gives my bank account a chance to heal, perchance to dream of next year's.

Comments

Flashback Friday

Class, Or Lack Thereof The Dwight Vice gravestone in Oquawka, Illinois. I bring this old chestnut out every so often just to remind me that class is classless. Dwight Vice was killed in his home near Oquawka in 2001. It was one of those things that can generate crime: two guys thought Dwight had a lot of money stashed at home because of his pot-selling sideline to supplement his fishing job. Not really one of those big drug deals gone-bad things. Marijuana was, according to the trial, about the only stuff Dwight sold. But these two guys barge into the house and killed Dwight and attempted to kill his 11 year old kid, Darryl, before they took off with what money they could find. His son, now 23, was stabbed in the back and left for dead. He survived and is wheelchair bound and has undergone several surgeries to repair his wounds. He will be paralyzed for life. None of this is pleasant. Reading the f...

The Mary Davis Home - Part 2

None of these pictures were taken by me, they came right from the MDH website. I am posting these so that friends who have never seen inside where I worked can gain access. After 27 years I have many stories, tales and acquaintances. But, I wouldn't know how to express them appropriately in a few paragraphs. I enjoyed 98% of my stay there and hope I made a difference in the lives of a fraction of the kids who entered. The original MDH at this site was just the front part. The large red-roofed area in back was added on in the 90's. This is the Jerry Carlton library. It was unofficially named after one of the counselors who truly loved the place. He passed away around 2002, I think. Mr. Farber looks like he is explaining a few things to a client. The classroom. Activity area with the gym behind the windows. Another shot of the classroom. It was a little different area to teach since we had 2 classes and 2 teachers i...

Flashback Friday - Cold Case - Part One

53 years ago today, Gordon "Peel" Duncan walked into the dark post office in Seaton Illinois and was brutally assaulted by an individual or individuals. He died two days later. The murder was never solved. Gordon Duncan was one of the publishers of the Seaton Independent, a weekly newspaper in town that started in the late 1800's and stopped publishing in the 60's. We boys were just young children when this took place, but we have been fascinated by it ever since. The imagination of kids, I suppose or maybe the fact that it was unsolved. Regardless, this was a big deal in our little lives. For our parents it tended to shatter the idea that Seaton, our town, was safe. That it could fend off the forces of evil in the world, that in our little universe we would be impervious to harm was gone forever. For us kids I don't suppose we were old enough to know real fear. Fear for us was not getting our list ...

Existing In BFE

Search This Blog