Art Open Studio Texas

Dear friend,
Well, I have just spent the last 16 hours or so trying to figure out why I cannot send out my art newsletter to my subscription list. So, I am hoping that Facebook and my blog here will get the word out to most of you who would like to know about the following events. First one is TODAY!
Thank you for your continuing interest.
'night (nap time) and see you at the book signing later today,
Kelly

CONTENTS of Borsheim Art News:
* Invitation to Last Open Studio
* Book Signings - Austin, Texas: “My Life as a Street Painter in Florence, Italy”
* Subscription Info.


Dear Art Lover,

Hello again. I just wanted to send you an invitation to my last Open Studio in the place that I have lived and worked for over 20 years.

October 14 - 16, 2011
Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day

Borsheim Arts Studio
223 Greystone Lane, Unit A
Cedar Creek, Texas 78612 USA
Tel. 512.303.3929
Online directions:
http://borsheimarts.com/map.htm

Besides letting you see the near-finished marble “Gymnast” that I hope that you have been following the creation of via my blog, I will also be introducing two new works. Both are inspired by the divorce that I have been going through this year. The first is a bronze “The Unwritten Future” and the second one is a 30” x 40” oil painting titled “New Year’s Eve.” Images will have to wait until my next newsletter.

While this kind of thing is never really happy, per se, I am not trying to share depression or anything dramatic. And moving offers opportunities for many, including an array of good deals on selected artworks, time to visit, and also a sale of a variety of art supplies and random goodies that I just cannot take with me. I hope that you will come out to this event or the few others I have before I leave Texas in November.

For details about all the future events, please visit my exhibits page:
www.borsheimarts.com/exhibits.htm

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Book Signings - Austin, Texas:

While you may order my new book "My Life as a Street Painter in Florence, Italy” online at:
http://www.borsheimarts.com/contact.htm
you may also pick it up at the following events in Austin, Texas, this week:

Book Signing - North Austin: Today 6 October 2011
6 - 8 p.m.
hosted by the Art Space and Austin Visual Arts Association (AVAA)
Austin Art Space
7739 Northcross Drive
Austin, Texas 78757


Book Signing - South Austin: Saturday 8 October 2011
4 - 6 p.m.
hosted by The Curioseum inside the Community Renaissance Market
Community Renaissance Market
6800 West Gate Boulevard
Austin, Texas 78745


Wrote Mary Condon, Mayor of Florence, Texas, "I love your book. I can barely put it down to do my work. I would like to order two more . . . "
[If you have already placed your order: I expect to ship books on Tuesday, October 11 since Monday is a postal holiday.]

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I hope to see or hear from you soon. Thank you for reading and sharing in my adventures. By all means, forward these invitations to anyone you think would enjoy them.

Pace (peace),

Kelly Borsheim

--
Borsheim Arts Studio
http://borsheimarts.com E-mail: sculptor@borsheimarts.com
Exploring our Internal Thoughts and How Our Bodies Express Them
223 Greystone Lane Unit A, Cedar Creek, Texas (USA) 78612
Telephone: (512) 303-3929 (local to Austin)

P.S. If you enjoy Borsheim Art News, please forward it to friends and colleagues. It comes to you about 6-8 times a year from Cedar Creek, Texas and Florence, Italy-based artist Kelly Borsheim. And on the contrary, if for any reason you would prefer to unsubscribe from this newsletter, just respond to this message with your wishes. Thank you.

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.

Impatience with Stone Carving

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Hello again. If you have followed along much on these posts or my art newsletters, you may remember that I tend to work the whole piece of art “at once.” Not literally. What I really mean is that I try not to leave any part too far behind the development of the whole.

In my work on the marble “Gymnast” sculpture, it became time for me to remove some of the base. I know when it is time to remove some of the support when I can no longer envision carving away parts of the figure that I know must be removed because they start to look tiny in comparison to the part next to it. I wanted to shape her hips more, but the stone beneath her was just too overpowering. And also, as I worked the hips, I knew that I would want to start designing the way her hips connect with the shape I want to carve underneath them.


This first image shows the line on the left side of the marble base that I wish to cut off. Note that my wooden support and levelers are location outside of this mark. My first task is to move the supports inside of this line so that the stone will not fall over after I remove some of its bottom.

Since I want to keep the marble block that needs to get cut off, I need to take some extra care when splitting the stone. Normally, I would tip the sculpture on her side so that I could use my diamond blade to cut a “safety stop” into all sides before splitting. However, these days I am working alone without access to another human being when I want one. And if I tried to tip my heavy stone girl over alone, I would either hurt myself or hurt her. Neither is an acceptable option. Safety first.

Instead, I am trying to be patient as I drill deep holes into the stone on the three sides that I can access in order to guide the break once I am ready to make it. Some people think that the mere fact that I carve stone means that I am a patient person. That is a poor assumption. I think that we are all patient in some areas, and hardly at all in others.

My little neck of the woods, Cedar Creek, Texas, recently made the NBC national news for our unusually early drought situation. (The rest of the summer is bound to be another brutal one for our plants!) With the sun and heat we have now here, I have only been working a few hours in the mornings and again in the early evening before dusk on my marble. And not every day. And the drilling is going slowly.

I find myself getting impatient and wanting to just split the stone and hope that it breaks along the line I want. But, the only way that I have successfully convinced myself to settle down and do it right is to remind myself that the marble really will not care. No one (but you, I suppose) would actually know . . . and it would be up to me to redesign my intended sculpture. So, my impatience could cost me a lot of time. And the problem is totally avoidable. Finally, I am terrible company when I am angry with myself.


This second image was taken with my camera’s timer as I used the back end of the axe that I use to chop wood in the wintertime and a metal pipe to hammer the supports further into the stone. I scored the safety lines on the sides and began drilling holes after that. Thank you for following this journey… I wish you patience (when it is called for).

Artist Open Studio Invitation

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

In case you have not received your invitation via either my art newsletter or on Facebook, please consider this blog posting as your invitation to my upcoming Open Studio:

Artist Kelly Borsheim's
Open Studio

What is happening on the easels and in the stone yard?

Enjoy a short ride to the country outside of Austin and Bastrop, Texas, sip red wine or cider, and take a sneak peek at what is going on in an artist's studio. Kelly will have several works-in-progress (WIPs) on various easels, including paintings and drawings. Also, you can see how far she has gotten on the stone carving of "The Gymnast." This is a figurative sculpture that must be completed by 1 March for an exhibit in San Antonio. [So there may be a bonfire out here if the weather gets too cold to carve in!]

You are Invited -- and Bring Your Friends!

Borsheim Arts Studio
223 Greystone Lane, Unit A, Cedar Creek, Texas 78612
Phone: 512-303-3929

6 & 7 February 2010, Saturday & Sunday
noon - 5:00 p.m. each day

NOTE: In effect now through 28 Feb 2010:

9-year Anniversary Celebration:

January 11 marks the 9th anniversary of when artist Kelly Borsheim sold her beeswax candle business and "took the plunge" to a life as a full-time artist. Here are the ways you can benefit:

• Enjoy a 20% Savings on ALL Giclée orders taken before 28 February 2010! Details: www.borsheimarts.com/giclee.htm
  
• FREE Giclée up to 18" long (up to a $200 value) or 20 FREE notecards with each painting commission received. (Your choice of available images.) Offer expires 28 February 2010. Information about how to commission a work of art, as well as some images of my past commissions, is online at:
  www.borsheimarts.com/commission.htm
  
• FREE shipping and handling on all art purchases (sculpture and 2-dimensional art) arranged from today through 28 February 2010.
  
• Interested in trying out my Layaway Plan? From now until 28 February, enjoy a reduced down payment of only one-third the full price instead of the normal half. As always, no finance charge if payments are made on time. For details, visit: www.borsheimarts.com/pricelist.htm
  

Know before you expand your art collection: Prices for Kelly's original drawings and paintings, as well as sculpture are all posted online - either on the page exhibiting each artwork or on the Price List page:
www.borsheimarts.com/pricelist.htm

THANK YOU for your interest!