FLORIDA VACATION PART 2, ART FEST AND BACK HOME

I've been back home for a few of weeks now. I'd better get this posting done before I forget where I was. We continued our travels in Florida to Cedar Key, a beautiful place on the west coast of Florida where we spent a delightful couple of days with Martha and John, enjoying the fine weather and scenery, tasted the local seafood, met some wonderful artists, even went painting with a plein aire group. Van and I are very seriously considering spending a couple of months there next winter.




The area is estuary and doesn't have the white beaches of much of the coast, which probably is why it isn't overflowing with tourists and buildings. This is the view near Martha and John's house. I painted this view, but I like the photo better.



We spent a couple of more days with my brother in Lake Wales, and some time with my niece and nephew and their families. I visited Bok tower which is one of the loveliest places in central Florida and on the highest point on the peninsula.


We left Florida from Orlando on April 1, Van went on home and I sent to the fabulous art retreat called Art Fest which takes place for 4 day at Fort Warden in Pt. Townsend Washington. I took 3 days of workshops,




I did 2 days with Anne Bagby who taught classes in decorating paper. We cut blocks to print with and also used her blocks, stencils and other things to print layers to make beautiful paper. Below are sections of some of the papers I made. I cut the block the was used to prints the top layer of white.








I also took a class with Lynne Perella. where I did a large painting with acrylics and collage and then made in into a book. I am still working on it and will show at some later date..... maybe.

A big part of Art Fest is trading.I did an exchange of 4x4 inch pages for 2 fat books. I painted and collaged the pages (116 in all) in December and January and mailed them to a coordinator who put them altogether into 2 books with 50+ pages in each and I got them at Art Fest. Most of the other participants were there too. Below are the fronts of 2 of my pages. Half were done with the same images (copies of some of my paintings) pasted on with other paper. the backs were decorated too. There was also a lot of trading of handmade things. I made ATCs similar to my 4x4s.






After a couple of days in Seattle, I returned to Alaska in a blizzard. Van met me in Juneau with our boat and we did a couple of days shopping and returned home. Another blizzard dropped about 8 inches on us. It was bad for Juneau which lost its hydroelectricity when an avalanche knocked out the lines.





This is the view in front of our house on April 16. We have since had some sunny weather and there are a few signs of spring. Have been busy in the studio since coming home which should make for another posting soon.