Fall Shows Are Starting to Fall Into Place

The Florida shop is cleaned out, most of our house work is completed, and we just got word that we were accepted into three fall shows. 

The shop looks great, the power is off, and we've been finishing up work on the house.  Painting completed - check; lawn cut short - check; trees trimmed - check; round up sprayed - check; bug spray complete - check; and on and on and on.

So, we decided not to put our house here on the market.  The more we started fixing it up, the more we started thinking that we didn't need to be in such a hurry to get rid of it.  Our plan is to head west for fall and winter shows, and then we're going to be coming back to Florida after December and do art shows in Florida with Mackie's clay work.  I'm really excited about this.  She has an incredible technique with clay that no one has seen in the southeast.

Today we were accepted into the Mountain View Art and Wine Festival and the Los Altos Art and Wine Festival, and we're waiting to hear on three others.  Additionally, Mackie has scheduled the Holiday Food and Gift Festival in Tacoma to display her pottery.  We're both really excited about the future and looking forward to seeing you at our upcoming shows!

What to Do When One Doesn't Have a Pad of Paper.

I ran across this photo in my phone today while I was looking at some photos I'd taken earlier today.  Sure, it's not quite as interesting as the shots of the 70 - year old guy that had "Death Rider" sequined into his shirt tonight at Boomer's restaurant tonight but the picture has merit anyway.

This was my interpretation of a tiki commission sculpture that I'm doing for some folks in the California bay area.  Funny that I never thought of myself as much of a drawing artist but looking at the photo I don't think that it's too bad.  It will be a few months before I'll get this guy created and then I'll post some photos of it to my Website.

Shop Sale

Lots of Florida happenings!  Mackie's been working on the house with painting, and I've been working in the shop sorting metal for the scrap yard - I can't even begin to tell you how it pains me to get rid of metal!  We worked together on a successful shop sale today getting rid of some unwanted tools and lots of art that we didn't have room for.

Here's three free form tables that I built last year that went in this morning's sale.  We ran several ads on Craigslist yesterday, and we were swamped when we opened at 10:00AM.  That's the first time that we had used Craigslist to advertise anything and wow, what a response!  We had over 100 people in that first hour and that did it for the sale! 

Here's a Jet bandsaw that's been sitting in the shop for about three years; it's one of those tools that I thought was going to save time and it never panned out.  My chop saw really cuts time and is ultimately safer to use. 

Mackie and I started working on the guest bathroom tonight.  She's pulling off the top layer of wallpaper while I'm focusing on the glue layer underneath.  It's great being together and working on projects.  Looks like we'll be here for a few weeks working on getting the house ready for the market.

Moving the shop from Florida to Oregon

What a challenge to move artwork, metal, and tools 3,500 miles across country.  That's not a mis-print!  Florida has been interesting but the time for us to completely relocate back to the west coast is here.  Moving is the bad news, but the good news is that we'll be west in a few weeks.

Show news flash!  Looks like we'll have a number of California shows scheduled in September.  We'll be posting an update to our website at www.cliftonmetalworks.com as soon as we get confirmation.  But things are looking good for Mountain View, Lafayette, Los Altos, and Beverly Hills. Nice.