May/June 2017

The summer art fair season has begun!  Thanks to all of you who stopped by the Arlington Heights Promenade of Art on June 10 and 11.  You were able to see my brand-new tent on its first show outing.  It held up extremely well with the high wind gusts we experienced on the first day of the show.  My next show will be The Art Center’s Festival of Fine Arts on Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25.  The festival will be held in Highland Park, Illinois, along Central Avenue and Sheridan Road.  The hours for the festival are 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. both days.  My location is Booth 30, toward the east end of the festival grounds on Central Avenue.  A full listing of the upcoming shows is included here.

At the end of April, I participated in the One of Kind Spring Show at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago as part of the Emerging Artist Market, a new feature to the event showcasing the work of artists who have been in business three years or less.  I want to thank everyone who ventured out in the cold, rainy Chicago weather to stop by and visit me!  This fabulous event included over 300 artists and artisans from the US and other countries.  Amazing talent was everywhere you looked!  If you haven't attended this event in the past, please make sure to do so in the future.  This was the second year for the Spring Show, so it is still building momentum.  The wildly popular One of a Kind Holiday Show will take place December 7-10, 2017 at the Merchandise Mart.  The holiday show boasts over 600 artists from around the world with a wide-array of unique and delightful items available just in time for the holiday gift giving season.

I want to give a big shout out to my next-door neighbor at the One of a Kind Spring Show, Tara Hicks of Taravista Designs.  She makes beautiful jewelry.  Tara is shown in the first photo below (on the right) modeling the “Abstraction” scarf design from my Vida collection.  I purchased the beautiful wrap bracelet in the second picture below from Tara after eyeing it the entire weekend of the show.  If you'd like to see more of Tara’s designs, please click on this link to her website:  http://taravistadesigns.wixsite.com/portfolio  Tara will be back in Chicago area this Fall, participating as an artist at the Naperville Riverwalk Fine Art Fair, which takes place September 16 and 17.

For now, I’ll also leave you with a couple of floral photos taken using my new Lensbaby Composer Pro II optic lenses.  These lenses allow photographers to expand their creativity in composing some very cool photographs with the lenses’ ability to blur and create interesting curves and dimensions.  I’m still learning, but it certainly is a lot of fun to play around with these lenses!