two new artist links

I've added two new artist links that you should check out.  The first is Donald Smith's City Trees Furniture.  Donald takes local scrap and salvage wood and turns it into beautiful, custom-made residential and commercial furniture.  The bench shown below is an example and a piece that we were fortunate to be able to buy.  If you're in the Ballard area, CTF is located just north of the ship canal at 4616 14th Ave NW.  He also shows the work of several other local artists, including a wide selection of hand-turned bowls.  Stop by and support a great local business & artist!

Trey Ratcliff is the second artist and his site, Stuck in Customs, is one of the most followed travel sites/blogs on the Internet.  Trey specializes in an emerging form of digital photography called "HDR" (high dynamic range) which is the digital equivelent to the old days of using graduated neutral density filters or sandwiching negatives or slides to capture a wider range of exposure than film or a camera's sensor is capable of.  Some people love the style....some people don't.  I'm more on the positive side of the movement but am trying to find my own comfort zone as I've never heavily manipulated my images and it's sometimes a challenge to retain a natural look when merging four or five images with a wide range of exposure.  

Below is one of my first HDR attempts, followed by a strip of the four images it was taken from.

Showing at Georgetown Art Attack - Saturday April 11

I'll be showing a wide selection of my work this coming Saturday, April 11, 2009 at Melinda Hannigan's studio (in the Equinox Studios complex) for the April Georgetown Art Attack. Melinda's studio is number 302 - we'll be there from 5pm to 9pm and would love to see anyone who can stop by. Melinda will also have some of her finished and in-progress work on hand and you'll want to get up close and see the detail in her beautiful paintings.  I wrote about Melinda in a post last summer (you can also scroll down as it was only four posts ago).

Equinox Studios is located at 6555 5th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98108.  It is located just south of the 1st Avenue South bridge....going south on Highway 99, instead of bearing right to cross the 1st Avenue South bridge, bear left onto East Marginal way.  Cross Michigan Street, then left on River and an immidiate left onto 5th Ave South.  Directions from the Equinox site can be found here; or from Google maps here.

Please stop by!

Illuminating Mystery

 
Christine Paintner is a friend of ours who runs Abbey of the Arts, a site chalked full of rich spiritual and inspirational content.  Christine also writes and publishes a great deal of content in books and journals that feature her work as well as others'.  Her Spring 2008 Reflective Art Journal is titled Illuminating Mystery: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice and features the work of several artists who she's interviewed for a Sacred Artist Interview series on the Abbey site - you can read more about it here.  I was interviewed by Christine last year and part of that conversation and a favorite image from this site are featured in Illuminating Mystery.  Please spend some time browsing the Abbey website -- you won't be disappointed.  

Grace Unbound

Last fall, Kayce (aka Lucy to some of you) decided to create a short book on the topic of grace....something we have experienced abundantly during the last several years. The writing combines Kayce's own words on the subject with favorite entries from others. She was also kind enough to make it a collaborative project with me providing the visual art. The result is Grace Unbound, published in November. Although we...or I should say Kayce, has gotten a whole bunch of copies into peoples' hands, I haven't done a very good job of letting people know about it in my small corner of the world.

If you feel like taking a flyer, you can order the book directly here, or drop me an email and we'll be happy to send you a copy - the cost with shipping is $22.  You will love the writing and I'm confident you will enjoy the images as well!

Top Three Shots of 2007: #1

I realize that 2008 is almost over and i never did post my #1 favorite image from 2007.

So, just to get it out there......this was taken in July (2007) during a week with our friends in Bermuda. Kayce and I were tooling around on our scooters on a beautiful Saturday morning and came across ernest s. painting the roof of this house in pembroke parish, also known as the 'north shore'. i struck up a nice dialog with ernest and learned a little about him - he drives a cab on the island when the work is available, and he paints roofs to fill in the gaps. i emailed him a copy of this image and a couple of others that turned out nicely....but haven't heard back.

I love the way the white of the roof and ernest's clothes blend in with the clouds, and the blue house with the sky. it's almost as if he's painting in the clouds.