Newsletter November 2010

NEWSLETTER November 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

The day after Thanksgiving brought our first snowfall of the season. Steve got the toboggan out of the garage and used it to take the trash out to the road. Then he pulled me around on it, with both of us laughing like little kids. Our total snowfall was only about two inches, but it was enough to make everything look white and wintry.

November is when we are settling down to indoor projects and getting ready for the long haul of winter in Maine. The work in the yard and garden is replaced by feeding the woodstove with the wood that Steve has cut and split, and spending time sitting in my favorite chair in the kitchen near its warmth. This is an in-your-face climate, where life changes radically as the seasons change. One of the joys of winter is slowing down a little.

The month of November has been very different for me. I decided that I want to archive my Moments of Transcendence collection in a real life hard copy book in addition to using digital files. I did some research, chose an online print-on-demand company that allowed me to do the design myself, and started laying it out page by page. In this book I want to share the motives behind the work as well as document the individual paintings, so I have been doing a lot of writing, too.

I am absolutely having a ball with this project! When I started it, I thought that I would be impatient to get it over with so I could go back to more drawing and painting. I had no idea that making a book could be so much fun. I am starting from scratch, learning how to use the software and figuring out what makes the pages look good to me. It’s just like learning to use a new medium, really. I am finding that a lot of the same design elements that make a good painting apply to a good page layout, too.

There is something very satisfying about the process. I love books anyway, so the lure of making one myself is irresistible. And just like an individual painting from the collection preserves a single encounter with beauty, the book preserves the experience as a whole. I can’t reproduce for the readers the experience of seeing the work hanging in a gallery, but I can at least give them a good description of how it tastes.

I don’t know how long it will take me to complete this project, but I will keep you posted on my progress. I will be away from home for a couple of weeks in December, spending time with family, so I may combine the December and January newsletter into one.

In the meantime, I am continuing my epic studio cleaning sale and posting more work on my website. This month I added a series of still life paintings and more of the Exploration of Natural Design work from 2006-7. I also posted a calligraphy that I did as a gift and fundraiser for some friends of ours, which you can see at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/featured/romans-12-be-transformed-betsy-gray-bell.html. For every print of Romans 12:2 Be Transformed calligraphy that I sell, I am going to send $10 to Church Without Walls International.

My gift to you this month is a postcard size print of this Romans 12:2 calligraphy. If you print it at 200 dpi it will come out as a 4” by 6” print.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

For those of you who are local, Pennacook Art Center will be opening its December show at the River Valley Technology Center gallery in Rumford, ME with a reception on Friday, Dec. 3 from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. Stop by to meet the artists, enjoy the refreshments and the art, and sign up for the door prize drawing. We are putting out two more print racks, so our selection of unframed prints will be growing. We also have prints available on our new website at http://pennacook-art-center.artistwebsites.com/. I have some art posted there that is not on my own site.

No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter. (from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.

Betsy