Art in the Burg day

I was up before the sun and off to Middleburg, Virgnia by 7:25AM on my art sale day in Piedmont horse country. The sky clouded over on the hour and fifteen minute drive but I arrived ahead of schedule and got started quickly setting up my area. I had 12 vertical prints and 10 horizontal prints to hang in rows on wooden easels. I also had to lay out my table and get ready for visitors and meet the other artists. I got so wrapped up in the hanging and visiting I forgot to shoot my display when I finished setting it up later I snagged a few shots while I had a few minutes of quiet time. In the end it was over before I expected and easy to break down thanks to the great space and the great team hosting the show. We enjoyed conversation, art sharing, some sales, vegetable stew and cheese with crackers cookies and special thanks to my new art pal Gail Guirreri-Maslyk for a delicious  cup of coffee! She needed one and I wanted one, and so she went to the grocery store and bought the fixings then made us a pot! It was just perfectly brewed and enjoyed with some sugary treats I never eat anymore.

Chris, Peter, Tom and Gail 

 parish house Peter Wood staked out the front door to sell his rusty metal creations and fill the guest book with contacts 

My favorite of Peter's rusty metal sculptures. 

Our day was busy and visitors came and lingered and enjoyed looking and many buying some new art works. I was showing my new series of flower sketches and prints for the first time and also my hand bound books. I also took a few folding book prints from the old days in Artomat® that always attract gift buyers or people who need something small to delight. I was happy to see my pal Judith from West Virginia for the first time since 2007 and meet her buddies one of whom is also a graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY were I studied so many years ago. I even had a visitor from my gang of sketch crawl friends drove out from Reston. It was a perfect day even if the sky was threatening rain on and off all day. We managed to stay dry most of the day in our lovely parish house great room meeting hall. The carpenter who built our easels did a fantastic job and they worked better than anything I have used to hang and display art in a room where you can not put nails in the walls. So I am very happy today if a little tired. Thanks to everyone who made yesterday possible and a handsome success for my new works. For a first time event it was very good and we all were excited at the prospect of a return next year. I now look forward to reorganizing my prints and sketches for the next installation in Crystal City Arlington, Virginia across the river from DC at Artomatic 2012.

Jim the painter with two visitors, Jason Alexander the potter and wife Maria who are talking to a third visitor (left to right)

My book/portfolio table and display easel, after 6 prints in frames sold. 

ARTOMATIC 2012 this is my wall on the second floor of 11 stories of office building, soon to be painted and filled with flowering sketches! 

getting ready

large and small Coptic bound books ready to fill

This past month I have been working on making a bundle of new Coptic bound blank books to offer at the Art in the Burg show Saturday April 28th in Middleburg, Virginia. It is always exciting to select the various materials that go into the covers and sewing of a new Coptic binding. There are fine cover cloths and handmade marble papers and a color bee's waxed linen thread that gets glass beads strung on them as they loop in and out of the signatures of each book spine. First step is to select the cover paper and cloth and prepare the boards they are glued over. Then cutting them and gluing them down and put in my heavy steel screw press from the 19th century to hold them with blotter paper very flat while that glue dries over 24 hours.

two sets of new book covers after pulling them out of the screw press 

Cover on the left a cherry blossom printed japan paper and on the right are woodblock printed red from Florence, Italy (wrapped in waxed paper) 

Then comes adding the folded, hole punched signatures of fine cotton writing paper is the next step. It begins with the paper signatures then a length of linen thread and a cup of glass beads at the ready I start and sew it all into a book small takes an hour larger takes a few hours to get them all laced up and in the stack of completed Coptic bound books.

brown cloth, aqua end pages and green linen thread and glass beads

all sewn together the finished book stands n the sun ready to use. 

4 new pocket sized books completed in blue, gold, brown, and purple

and recently added ORANGE! 

In addition to books I am working on adding scans of my new watercolor sketches to my portfolio web site which now has a new page devoted to my practice of a daily sketch. That is over at this web site: Frederick Nunley  Prints and originals will also be on display and available at the Art in the Burg show. Earlier this week Keith and I signed up to show at the 2012 ARTOMATIC in Crystal City, Virginia with 1200 of our dear artist friends and neighbors! This will be our 3rd Artomatic done together since 2000. He will be making a large ikebana installation and I will be showing my sketch prints the big opening May 18th is in a huge office building right next to the Crystal City metro station exit. It runs Wednesdays through Sundays all day and late into the night for after work visitors. Hope you can plan to stop by this spectacular exposition of all kinds of art works by local artists. It began in Washington DC as a non-judgmental art collective installation and rules as the biggest and most diverse exhibition opportunity.

4-14-2012 the twin pink parrot tulips that came from our garden were my sketch subject...

Walk in the bluebells

forest edge native white dogwood flowering 

 We went out to Manassas to visit and got a little time on Friday April the 6th to take a two hour walk across the Bull Run Battlefield and over to the Stone Bridge for a look at the magnificent wild Virginia Blue Bells carpeting the forest floor by the creek.

tall Virginia pines and white dogwood flowers along the trail

pasture land is beautiful edged in native trees. 

jack in the pulpit grew up on the side of a boardwalk over the swampy areas 

blue flowers carpet the forest floor all along bull run beside the old stone bridge

view from the river bank looking up the slope

typical blue bells 

one or two were pink! 

close up view of a wild dogwood flowering by a pine tree trunk 

panoramic view of the hill top battlefield with blue ridge mountains in the distance 

End of the walk where we began at the Stonewall Jackson monument