One, Two, Three, and More Art Shows To Go

 It's been roughly a month since we've returned from Florida, and last Thursday night we headed south to California on one of our many art fair excursions.  We stopped just south of Medford, Oregon to spend the night before heading into the Lafayette area for our next show.  I woke up about five AM and rousted Mackie and the schnauzers from bed and off we headed down Interstate 5 in search of our next adventure.

We topped Siskiyou Summit and headed into California.  Yep, that's the thermometer inside our Dodge Pickup reading 39 degrees - I love the fall in the northwest.  Crisp mornings and warm afternoons.  It's tough to beat!  On we go to the California Inspection station.

"Do you have any fresh fruit or plants" asked the state attendant?

"No" I replied.

"What's in the trailer?" she asked.

"Artwork" I replied.

She looked back down to her book and said, "move along".

The California inspection station has always been a mystery to me for over 25 years.  They pay state employees to sit in booths at every entry point that I've ever been on to ask those same questions.  I've never seen them stop someone.

Mackie, my lovely wife next to the truck, our good friend Judy, along with Sophie and Sherman by our truck.  It's all about the parking at any art show, and us professionals are always trying to jockey our rigs around to the closest possible spot to our booth.  The shorter the distance the easier to set up and tear down.  A few days later we were able to move our truck up the street and turn it around during the evening. This probably saved us about 30 minutes during our tear down Sunday evening.

One of my new creations bogarted Mackie's coffee and wouldn't give it back.  The brand shall remain nameless, but the white cup with the green mermaid should give it away!

One more show down and a million more to go.

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.

Tai Chi

 

Walking out of my shop last week, one of the other artists in my collective had lined up some of my work and was talking photos of my day's work.  I started laughing at my friends and it keeps me in line of why I do the things I do.  I'm the luckiest guy in the world.  I'm allowed to create art that people enjoy and makes them smile and laugh in the morning.  With so many choices in this world, I'm fortunate that so many people enjoy our work and want to be around us.

 

I'm in Bellevue this weekend and then taking the next month off to finish moving things from Florida back to our home in Vancouver, and then we'll be getting for our fall shows.  I'll have our website updated at http://www.cliftonmetalworks.com/ later in August, but right now, it appears that we'll be in the Mountain View, Lafayette, and Los Altos, California areas in September and towards the upper California Bay area in October. 

 

If you're going to be in the Portland, Oregon area, go visit the Love Art Gallery at 8036 SE 13th Avenue, Portland, Oregon.  Here's thier website http://www.loveartgallery.com/  We'll have new creations that we'll be featuring there begining August 3rd, 2011. 

 

Joe

 

A Boy and His Roots

This week I'm at the Connoisseures' Marketplace in downtown Menlo Park, California.  Menlo Park is about 10 miles or so north of San Jose and highway 101 (also known as the Bayshore Freeway here), and south of San Francisco by about 30-something miles.  The downtown core has somehow survived the overgrowth that has taken over a number of smaller communities in this area.  There's a quaintness that makes me feel good whenever I'm in and around one of these smaller towns.  It reminds me of spending time with my Grandfather in neighboring Sunnyvale before progress leveled all but one block of the Sunnyvale downtown core.

I've done a number of shows around this area but this is the first time that I've driven around this area since I was around 9 or 10 years old.  It's amazing the things that I remember and how I know how to get to so many places from 40 years long since past.  What do I remember...

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents home on East McKinley.  They adored me (very true) and much of my younger years were spent in their living room on one of those rope-style woven rugs.  It's the kind that was made from soft cotton and always seemed to be oval in shape and perfect for a young boy to lay on in front of the black and white television.  I recall my Grandmother making me oatmeal for breakfast and occasionally getting a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it; this is one of those weird sounding treats that is not to be knocked until it's tried.  Grandpa Joe worked as a janitor at Westinghouse and always brought me a treat each day at his shift's end; usually, it was a small bag of Planter's Peanuts or something along that line.

Saturday night I tracked down and had dinner at Vesuvio Pizzaria in Santa Clara.  I have no idea how I can remember this place from 43 years back, but the place is celebrating its 50th anniversary and it's still there!  Congratulations to them.  The place was much the way I recall.  Walking into the door and straight ahead is where I place my order; a quick glance onto the wall to see the menu and I order the spaghetti with meat sauce that I remember eating.  I take my number and walk over to the bar and order a "barley pop".  Walking over to my seat, they call my number before I even have a chance to find one.  Hey, I like quick service.

I just into my plate and ahh.  Old noodles briefly brought up to room temperature.  The bread was good.  I'm thinking that you have the picture here.

On to my next adventure.