Sept. 14

Show & Share to highlight

September meeting program

by Kitty Garlock

As always at our September meeting, we have arranged a program of show and share.  Due to the times being what they are, we will be sharing on Zoom after our business meeting.  This requires a few procedural steps and a tiny bit of know-how in order for things to happen efficiently.

First, I will be sending a reminder email with some procedure points. I would appreciate it if you would respond to my email if you plan to share. Just send your name (in the body of your email) and say “sharing in September’s BWS”; then I will know how many people to plan for and how to allot our time.

Second, all artwork should be shared without glass. Matted is OK, but the glare of the glass is problematic.

Third, you have three choices on how to share:

• When you notify me, send a picture of the piece you want to share. When it is your turn to share in the meeting, I can bring it up from my computer and you can talk about it.
• Have the piece ready at your computer and hold it up to the view hole as you talk.
• Use the share button on the Zoom screen as follows:

For computers and laptops:

1. Have open on your desktop a scanned copy or photograph of your painting. Edit it as you wish in Photoshop or another image processing app. Open the digital file on your computer monitor, and size it to fill the height of your screen.
2. When it is your turn, click out of Zoom’s Full Screen mode so you can switch between Zoom and your file.
3. At the bottom center of the Zoom window, click on the Share Screen button.
4. Click on the image you want to show and it should fill the screen. You should still see a Zoom window off to the side.
5. Start talking so your computer becomes the active Zoom window.
6. If you have several images, stack them in a folder, top to bottom, in the sequence you want them to appear. After you have shown each one, miniaturize it and the next should appear.
7. When you are finished, click out of Share Screen.

For iPads:

1. Have your photo gallery open on your device before you enter the meeting 
2. When it is your turn click on the Share Screen button.
3. You should see a list of options. Choose photo.
4. Your photos will come up, so choose the one you want and click done; this action will display the photo to everyone.
5. When you are done click out of the Share mode 

We look forward to seeing what you have been doing since last year!

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BWS Paint-outs

by Betty Wagoner

BWS’s last paint-out of the year will be at T.C. Steele State Historic Site Saturday, Oct. 10, starting at 10 a.m. The fall at T.C. Steele is beautiful even in rainy weather.  The entry fee is $10 for adults and $8 for seniors. We will be able to paint the beautiful grounds plus tour the Steele Studio and Home.

Last month, on a beautiful summer day, eight artists set up easels and chairs at The Woolery.   We painted and sketched the metal shell of the Woolery, stone columns and walls, and old machinery such as the crane in the back.  The farmer’s market at the site that day, offered us a chance to stock up on fruits and veggies.

BWS Membership Show opens Oct. 2

The 2020 BWS Membership Show will feature the theme “We Paint … Renewal/Rejuvenation,” but COVID-related pieces will be accepted as well. The show will hang Oct. 2 – 29 at The Vault at Gallery Mortgage Company, 121 E Sixth St., Bloomington.

Kathy Barton, Show chair, encourages artists to offer their paintings for sale; however, that is not required. When pricing your artwork, keep in mind that The Vault will keep a 25 percent commission of all sales.

Because of COVID-19 conditions, no physical reception is planned for the show. A Virtual Gallery will be provided on the BWS website instead. This will require all artists to submit digital images to Carol@BloomingtonWatercolor.org before Sept. 22.

In September BWS members will receive an electronic invitation to view the Virtual Gallery that they can forward to their friends,family and art contacts.

Mark these important dates in your calendar:

Sept. 22 Submit images for Virtual Gallery to Carol@BloomingtonWatercolor.org

Sept. 29 Deliver paintings to The Vault at Gallery Mortgage, 121 E Sixth St. between 4 and 6 p.m.

Oct. 29 Pick up paintings at The Vault.

The Show Prospectus, which includes detailed information all exhibiting artists should read plus the labels for the paintings, is available at https://bloomingtonwatercolor.org/prospectus/.

To participate in the show, all exhibiting members must have paid dues for the 2020-2021 Fiscal Year.

BWS to exchange ATCs

for the holidays

BWS won’t have a party at Meadowood this year, but that doesn’t mean the season will go unmarked by BWS. Jo Weddle announced at the August meeting that members will be exchanging Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). She showed examples and outlined how the exchange will work. But in case you didn’t take notes, here is what you need to know.

1. Paint one to 10 originals that are 2-½ x 3-½ inches. This is the size of a baseball card. You can paint any topic, and they can be all different or all the same. Put your name and contact information on the back; some do this with labels.
2. You can find many examples and instructions by looking up artist trading cards on google.com.
3. You can cut cards out of your favorite watercolor paper or purchase artist trading cards.  I have found the best selections on amazon.com. Strathmore offers various paper choices, and packs of 10 or 20 cards cost less than $5. Andrew Preston of Preston Arts Center in Louisville also carries them and gives BWS members a 20 percent discount. Ones at Hobby Lobby are not good quality paper for watercolor and have a smooth surface.
4. Send your finished cards in an envelope along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Cassidy Young at 1419 E. Browning Lane, Bloomington, IN 47401. Be sure to send them to Cassidy so she will receive them no later than Nov. 1.
5. Cassidy will open all envelopes and return to each person in their stamped-self-addressed envelope as many cards by other people as the number of cards sent to her.
6. Do not open this envelope until our Monday, Dec. 14 Zoom meeting. We will all open them at the same time and share our oohs and aahs along with thanks.
7. You can save these in three-ring binders in plastic sheets you can purchase made for baseball trading cards (also available online).
8. Questions?  Contact Jo Weddle.

Thank you letter from BWS Scholarship recipient

Words of advice

from a fellow Indiana artist

Jerry Harste came across this letter Kurt Vonnegut wrote to a high school class and found the overall message inspirational. He did take exception to Vonnegut’s last piece of advice, however, and offered an alternative, which can be found following Vonnegut’s letter

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond – and his response is magnificent: 

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances anymore because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six-line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Jerry’s final recommendation would have been to paint a picture and then put it away. “Don’t tear it up,” Jerry says. “Six months later — or maybe a year – ‘do something to it, then do something to that something, and soon, you will have something.’ As you can see, I’m a Jasper Johns proponent.”

Member News

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.Two BWS members, Bess Lee and Jerry Harste, have had works juried in to the Desiderata show, which will hang at the ArtsIlliana Gallery, 23 N Sixth St, Terre Haute from Sept. 4 to Nov. 20. Jerry’s piece is a wall hanging or throw made from his paintings of goats that a friend put together in a 40-inch by 60-inch quilted wall hanging.

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Because of the pandemic, the Burris family art show, “A Look at Relative Art…” will hang at the Columbus Learning Center through Spring 2021. This is a collaborative family exhibit of works by Bob Burris, his deceased wife Catherine, and their daughter Lydia.

Lynne Gilliatt’s “Pandemic Walk” was published in the August issue of The Ryder magazine.

The Watercolor Society of Indiana’s Juried Exhibition included works by four BWS members, two of whom received top recognitions. Stephen Edwards’s “Studio Windows” received the Dorothy Schulz Englehart Memorial Award of $1,100. Jerry Harste’s “A Steadying Force” received the Theodore M. Englehart Memorial Award of $750. Jerry also earned WSI Signature Member status. MarySue Veerkamp-Schwab was recognized as a first-time exhibitor with her painting, “The Old Homestead,” and Robin Edmundson exhibited “Bluebell Wood – Just Starting to Bloom.” The show hangs in the Bret Waller Gallery of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Indianapolis Museum of Art through Sept. 26.

Stephen Edwards has also recently had paintings accepted into the Hoosier Salon, the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society 41st Annual International Exhibit (juried by Daniel R. Smith AWS, NWS), as well as the Philadelphia Watercolor Society’s 120th Annual International Exhibition Works on Paper (juried by John Salminen AWS, NWS). Edwards also received 1st Place Award in the Pendleton Artists Society exhibit.

Andy Roberts sent in two paintings he has done from Upland Plein Air and BWS paint-outs in July and August. The Woolery Mill one is from the July BWS paint-out and the other is Cheryl Berg’s farm  barn and stables, which was from a Tuesday Upland paint-out. “Getting outside and enjoying new sites is a great way to keep artistically motivated and sane during our Covid isolation,” Andy writes.

BWS member Claude Cookman is the lead curator of a virtual photography exhibition opening in October. “Wild Horse Running: The Courageous Journey of Tom Fox” is presented by The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and Untitled Light Gallery. It documents IU alumnus Tom Fox’s terminal struggle with AIDS in the late 1980s when there was no medical response for this disease.

Cookman will also moderate an online panel discussion by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution medical writer and photojournalist who documented Tom’s final months, a gay pastor who lived through the crisis, and a doctor who gained national recognition for his response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in our region.

You can join the panel Friday, Oct. 2, at 5 p.m., by going to this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1608126726031106

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Beyond BWS

The Watercolor Society of Indiana announces its Membership Exhibit of the Art Association of Henry County in New Castle Oct. 22 to Nov. 20. The show is open to WSI members who submit entry forms and payment by Oct. 2. Entry information is available on the WSI website: http://watercolorsociety ofindiana.org.

Calendar

Sept. 14 Monthly BWS meeting. Check email for Zoom login info

Sept. 22 Deadline for submitting images for Membership Show’s Virtual Gallery. Email image to Carol@BloomingtonWatercolor.org

Sept. 29 4 to 6 p.m. Deliver Membership Show painting to The Vault at the Gallery Mortgage Company, 121 E. Sixth St., Bloomington

Oct. 2 BWS Membership Show opens at The Vault, 121 E. Sixth St., Bloomington. See Virtual Gallery on https://bloomingtonwatercolor.org

Oct. 2 Deadline for entry forms and payment to be received at Watercolor Society of Indiana for its Membership Show at the Art Association of Henry County in New Castle

Oct. 10 10 a.m. Final BWS Paint-out of 2020 at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site

Oct. 12 BWS Zoom meeting

Oct. 22 – Nov. 20 WSI Membership Exhibit at the Art Association of Henry County in New Castle

Oct. 29 Pick up paintings from the BWS Membership Show

Nov. 1 Deadline for Cassidy Young to receive ATCs for Holiday Exchange

Nov. 9 BWS Zoom meeting

Dec. 14 BWS Zoom meeting