Selling Stone Marble Alabaster Texas

Dear Art Lover,

     It pains me to say that I have to sell some stone.  I have a huge block of 36” x 18” x 18” Colorado Yule Marble.  It was cut from the quarry in Marble, Colorado, in 2003 near where they were searching for stone replacements for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C.  It is a lovely piece of rock and I had wonderful plans to carve a male torso from it.  The block weighs almost 1200 pounds and the price is $1200.  I drove this from Colorado to my (now former) home in central Texas (Bastrop County, SE of Austin).  Pickup only, although we will help you load the stone into your truck or van.

 

I am also selling the large {Texas) limestone block that you see here being lifted with an A-frame and chains.  [The Colorado Yule block is the white one in the background.]  I do not know the weight or dimension on this stone, but is it larger than the Yule.  However, limestone is less expensive than marble… I will accept $600 for that stone… a mermaid, can you not see her?

I also have several smaller stones.  The next featured is a gorgeous piece of the famous quasi-transparent white Italian alabaster.  I paid $600 and that is what I would like to receive for this beauty.  She is 244 pounds.  There is another piece of Italian alabaster that I started to carve into a giant snail shape… if interested in that one let me know and we can see what we may work out.  And you see a piece of marble in the foreground.

I will be returning to Texas in early April and deciding on the fate of a lot of my belongings there as I prepare to move most of my life to my new home in Italy.  I am sure that I will have other art materials for sale, but until I return and have some time, I may not know.

If you are interested in being contacted once I have more information, please let me know soon.. this trip is short and packed with so much travel and visiting along with work that the more organized I am before I arrive, the more I may help you receive something you want.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me and reading along!   

Peace,

Kelly

P.S.  Subscribe to the art newsletter here (it is FREE):  http://www.borsheimarts.com/contact.htm

Bastrop Fine Arts Guild Texas

Dear Art Lover,     

      After I left the Italian Consulate in Houston on Monday, I drove west and made a couple of stops in Bastrop, Texas.  Many, many years ago when I was branching out to neighboring towns to try to build up my art career, I had gotten involved in the Bastrop Arts Community.  I taught in an Art After School program for elementary children and I joined the Bastrop Fine Arts Guild. 

     Boy, has the guild and the city taken some dramatic leaps forward!  The gallery run by the Guild has moved to 815 Main Street and the space is such an improvement!  It is open and has windows in the front and on one side that allows visitors to see some art even when it is after normal gallery hours.  They also have a classroom in the back.  I was grateful to several artists there who opened the gallery so that a small group of us had time to meet and swap stories.

Bastrop Fine Art Guild Artists CJ, Myrlene, Peggy, Mike, Kelly, with Jeff in front

 

Bastrop Fine Art Guild Artists Peggy, Mike, Kelly, and Myrlene

     In addition to that big change, I drove past a convention center!  All new, of course.  And the Guild members showed me the architectural plans in the works for a new community art center that will be across the street from the Bastrop Convention and Visitors Center.  This kind of thing was never something that I heard any of the Guild members of my time even dreaming about!

tasty dinner prepared by Bastrop quilter Elizabeth Overholser

with my friends in front of one of Elizabeth's quilt [E is second from left]

      Four years ago when I left Texas for a return to what I had started in Italy, there were horrible wildfires in our area.  So many people in Bastrop lost their homes and were displaced for a long time.  I am so happy to see that grants and other wonders are being given to Bastrop to help rebuild this artsy community.

The August Art Sale continues… see postings here on my blog this month or the corresponding album on Facebook.  Offer ends 31 August 2015.

Dana Lounging - Original Oil Art

Today’s listings:

Dana Lounging - AVAILABLE $200
20" h X 10"Oil on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas [framed]
© 2006 Kelly Borsheim 

http://www.borsheimarts.com/painting/room08.htm

 

Dana's Backside  - Offer:  $300
16 x 20 oil on gallery-wrapped canvas
2005 by Kelly Borsheim
http://www.borsheimarts.com/painting/room06.htm

Dana's Backside - Original Oil Figure Painting from Life

Gillian - Original Oil Figure Painting from Life by Kelly Borsheim

  

Gillian    -  Offer  $200

20" X 16" Oil on Canvas framed
2003 Kelly Borsheim
http://www.borsheimarts.com/painting/room05.htm

"Gillian Draped"   - Offer $850
24" h X 48" Acrylic on Canvas (including metallics) © 2003 Kelly Borsheim
http://www.borsheimarts.com/painting/room06.htm

Payment plans accepted; no finance charge, as usual.

Peace,

Kelly

~ Kelly Borsheim, sculptor and painter

http://BorsheimArts.com

P.S.  Happy birthday to my wonderful Godmother and sweet Aunt Carole!

Gillian Draped - Original Figure Acrylic Painting from Life

Yin and Yang

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, a lot has happened since I last wrote to you. On my end, I drove over 18 hours to a suburb of Chicago to visit Dilbara Arapova, the wife of my dear (and late) friend Vasily Fedorouk. Our visit was barely 24 hours, but we packed a lot in. I took this shot from their living room, enchanted by the morning light and shadows. Three of Vasily’s sculptures can be seen in part here.

Then I drove another four hours to get to Indianapolis to see my good friend and gallerist Don Elliott. He owns the Franklin Barry Gallery and was featuring my work for the art event. The First Friday Gallery Walk was a lot of fun. Fewer partiers and more people really interested in original art. Labor Day weekend turned out to be a better turnout than I expected! I was really happy getting to visit with kids as well as grown-ups; reconnecting with familiar faces and making some new acquaintances. We got to share stories. And I got updated on the travels of several patrons of the gallery that I have met in years past. This next image shows our little “after-party dinner” at a nearby restaurant.
Don is sitting next to me, while artist Travis Little and I hold down the end spots of our group of friends. What a day! I think that Don and I arrived at his home around 1 a.m.

I did not leave the gallery until they closed on the next day, only to drive another more than 18-hour drive back to Texas. I slept maybe 3 hours along the way, so once I returned to my home studio, I fell into a coma-like nap on Sunday. I woke to a call from John B. asking if I was close to the wildfires. Well, that was a bit sobering for an eye opener! He ended up coming over to help me pack what we could. Thankfully, I had not unpacked the art in my car that I brought back to Texas from Indy. The frustrating thing was that there was so little information. Not on TV, not radio that I found, and even the Internet offered little. As the hour got later, John just told me to give up. He believed that the authorities were more focused on getting everyone out than they were in talking about details about the fire. But then, lack of accurate information is often the case in emergencies. John, Cat (the abandoned kitten that now has a home here), and I drove off around 5 a.m. to Austin.

We drove back about seven hours later, around noon on Monday, September 5. These next three images were shot through the car windows. The first image was a fire we passed near a propane supply place not far from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. This fire had not been reported on the news that we had seen.

The middle image of this series was taken on Farm-to-Market Road 812, just inside the Bastrop County border after leaving Travis County. I must say, it is really difficult to tell distances on things like mountains … and smoke.

And this third image was shot just as we turned onto Greystone Lane. This dirt road goes for about three-fourths of a mile before my driveway starts. That may have been the closest the fires got to our neck of the woods, but it was hard to tell. We had received a call that the fire had jumped a road near the Cedar Creek post-office (a 10-minute drive by road, not sure about crow-flying distance). But I never saw anything that confirmed that the fires had moved that far south.

For the next few days, John and I returned to the house during the day, working and cleaning up dead leaves, plants, and trees, and moving it from the house. We spent the nights in Austin at John’s place with Cat.

In all honestly, I feel a bit daft showing you these not particularly dramatic images when Facebook enabled me to see more of what was going on in the thick of it. Several of my friends have lost their homes in nearby Bastrop. Too many more that I did not know have lost so much. The drought this year and the 3-digit temperatures have been with us longer than “normal” and apparently this is the worst dry spell Texas has had since recorded history.

Still today (the 9th), I have been back in my outdoor studio carving marble and working indoors during the hot time of day again. I have been sorting things and trying to figure out what I have that can be donated to many of my artist friends who are now homeless. I finished my last book edit yesterday for my project “My Life as a Street Painter in Florence, Italy” and I must say that I cannot wait to hold the book in my hands! So, good things and horrible things: what a summer of yin and yang.

Portrait Painting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

It is a joy to hear about a person who gives to others with an open heart. I learned of such a man recently when I was commissioned to paint his portrait.

Franklin Barry Gallery owner Don Elliott in Indianapolis sent me two snapshots taken by my American patron of the man I am to paint, “Big” John Henderson. I am not fond of working from photos, especially flash photos, however, sometimes that is all we have with which to work.

“There is nothing so intimidating as a white canvas.” I do not know who originated that quote, perhaps someone who is not a “clean-freak.” In any event, my first step was to apply a light wash of ‘rootbeer color’ on the canvas. Many years ago, I was visiting my friend Rebecca Neef in Bastrop, Texas, and I saw a copy she painted of a work by the late John White Alexander. I immediately fell in love with the rootbeer-colored glaze that Rebecca used on the dress of the figure. Turned out that Rebecca made the paint herself, having studied classic pigment making. She called it ‘asphaltum’, but decided ‘rootbeer’ was a more romantic name. I bought the paint from her straight away. I love this juicy color!

Winsor and Newton (W and N) now makes a similar hue called “Transparent Brown Oxide” and Rebecca said she stopped making asphaltum after she discovered this. So, having used up most of Rebecca’s pigments, I now use WandN.

Next, I posted my printouts of the images I received via e-mail and figured out my design of shapes on another sheet of paper. I later transferred my final portrait design to the canvas.

The transfer (vs. directly painting on the canvas) allows me to play with my design without ruining the background color, not having decided how much of I want to keep. It also allows me to move the figure around until I am pleased with where he sits in the composition.


Now for the goodie: Don Elliott asked me to continue my portrait special and so, I will. Here is the basic information on this offer:

From your photographs or from life, when possible:
You may choose:
Half life-size or smaller in pencil: $300 per head/person
Life-size (approx.) in charcoal: $500 per head/person
Life-size oil painting – monochromatic (sepia): $700 per head/person
If you prefer color, a life-size pastel drawing: $600 per head/person, life-size
Plus, FREE SHIPPING from Florence, Italy.

Contact me for details (just respond to this blog or visit my site).
Please let me know if this is a gift or if you are having another deadline (such as an anniversary party or wedding) so that I can make sure you receive your original art on time. All submitted photographs must be accompanied by permission from the copyright holder for a one-time use to create a painting from the photograph. And of course, if you were here in Florence, Italy, I would love to make a drawing of you from life.

Thank you for your continued interest and support. More to come . . .