Artsy Opportunities

Yes! The Winsor and Newton acrylics purchased on eBay arrived. I had to check them out. The white is a bit stiff, some colors have separation, but all in all, I think they are quite usable for being an old set of their discontinued paints. Now I’m waiting on FedEx to bring my Blick order, which includes some 5×5 gessoboard to use as ground for this year’s donations.

I found the call for entry in my email box. It’s actually a request for 5×5 inch original art donations for an annual FIVE SQUARED art show and sale at the Davis Family YMCA in Boardman, Ohio.  Here is the CallForArtFiveSquaredArtDonationForm (pdf flyer), if you are also interested in donating. All skill levels are accepted, they even do kiddie art, so it’s all cool.

I know my skills are lacking, out of practice for sure as I haven’t painted in years (as if watercolor under-paintings for colored pencil drawings don’t count). Figure it can’t be worst than my last donations.

I went with a Valentine theme with kids in mind in 2015, since it is a kid friendly event. (My grandsons like monsters, why the peace sign dude.) Last year, I did not donate anything… too soon after a health crisis. I also bailed from the YWCA’s women’s art committee since I wasn’t up to attending meetings or anything. It’s time to start doing things again, get back into my art again, take care of me again.

That’s why I’m going to BLANK – A Community Participation at The SOAP Gallery in downtown Youngstown on Friday night. That should be fun… it is exactly what the name suggests: a community paint event – NOT a paint and sip – and anyone in the community can participate, regardless of skill level.  Or, I should say 50 people can participate as they have 50 blank canvases hung on the walls. There is a small fee to reserve a canvas and you can BYOB. I’ve already reserved mine and fully intend to go with a blank mind… no preconceived notion of what to paint.

There is a link to this and other fun events happening at The SOAP Gallery on their Facebook page. All 50 paintings will be on exhibit through the month of November. If you are local, go see it… if not, await the documentation. The results of 50 people, from amateurs to professional artists, painting 50 canvases in the same space at the same time, all start to finish on one night, should prove to be quite interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Advertisement

Roots

Grandma, please stay in this house.
I want to visit you here when I’m all grown up.

Awe, such an odd request… have I really moved so much? A quick mental count of addresses (five) since this child was born eight years ago reveals a short list compared to my lifetime change of no less than 36 addresses.

Maybe more… it is easy to forget some places.

I grew up moving, new school every year, and never grew too attached to anywhere as an adult. Home is where you hang your hat, no matter where you are. Perhaps a little too Winnie the Pooh for cartoon psychology? Was it Piglet who said, “I go everywhere I go?” Twirled with Popeye’s “I am who I am” on down a life path of Paddington Bear adventures, clicking my heels together three times will not land me back in some magical place called home.

Okay Zarah, grandma is putting down roots… bought the house, with full intentions of staying put for the duration, if I am still alive and breathing on this planet when she is all grown up.

I requested a Burpee Seed Catalog… all wish books should be made of paper, even if you can flip pages online. I need to plant daisies, strawberries, and sunflowers to make the beds feel like mine.

Has it only been three months?

I lived downtown for three years, but obvious changes made me feel like a visitor to DoYo when I hopped the bus to run some errands in my old neighborhood. I had planned to buy Sumatra at Friends… but, the coffee shop is gone now, with brown paper “closed for business” signs plastered on locked doors. Circle revamped their store layout. That’s cool… they are adding more grocery items. Crossed paths with a bearded man who used to hit me up for a buck now and then, when he was clean shaven. New employee at Joe Maxx, who made me repeat my order.

How hard is it to understand that a request for a “tall” coffee means the customer wants coffee in the tall cup? Small, medium, and large are heights baby, not diameter sizes… they all take the same size lids.

Whoa… when did Joe Maxx change their to-go cups? The new not-as-stiff white paper cups totally suck… I ended up fighting with the lid as it kept popping off with the slightest pressure on the sides from just trying to pick it up. Before walking out the door, the dude was kind enough to swap the large for a medium cup, on which the lid stayed on better. Wish they’d go back to serving in the old brown cups, they were insulated a bit, kept the coffee warm longer.

I don’t mind change… as long as it is for the better.

Come Spring, the grandchildren can help me put seeds in the ground and we will grow some roots right here on the south side of Youngstown. We might grow some tomatoes, too.

Thanks for reading!

Flag This

My last act in the role as the Unwitting Advocate of IT shall be to shame encourage the owners of International Towers, an apartment building located in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, into replacing the tattered American flag that has been literally stuck up their pole for so long that the stripes are shredded to ribbons. The condition of that flag is disrespectful. It is like saying “we don’t care” about our flag OR our veterans. Yes, there are elderly and/or disabled veterans living in the building.  Some may have bled for the American flag on foreign soils, and this is what they see every day:

Zooming in on the flag through a window screen makes the photo fuzzy… but that is the view of the flag, what our veterans see, when they look out their windows.

Here is another photo, snapped at dusk by cell phone from ground level:

It would be nice if a flag replacement could be done in a ceremonial way… who do you contact about something like that? I don’t know, so I emailed the first ward city councilman.

By the way, I’m moving to a nameless neighborhood (it’s labeled “38” on the city’s map) in the 7th ward so I shall pass the imaginary baton on to whoever is willing to pick it up.  Thanks for reading!