Show Season update

We have been enjoying the rush and excitement of the Christmas Arts/Crafts Shows in the region for the past couple of weekends.

The Prince Edward Island Crafts Council provided and exceptional show at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. The entire team, all PEICC members, that worked on the show were very warm and welcoming. It was a delight to back on the island after not having been there for several years.

In Halifax, we had an outstanding show at Pier 23, the home of the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council's Christmas Market, again, beautifully organized and produced with outstanding results.

Thanks to everyone, including our regular and new clients who helped make these enjoyable events.

BTW, the music was relatively good both places.

We have three smaller one day events coming up, a 'men's night' at Viktor's Blue Rose Salon in Woodstock on Thursday, a sale at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre on Saturday and then back to Viktor's on the 6th, whereupon we will depart for Ottawa and The Originals Show for the 11th-21st of December. I am looking forward to Ottawa this year. The booth location is in the first isle towards the upper end. Our new booth design which we tested in the spring and has worked well for us at the Council shows should be ideal for this venue. We are also looking forward to reconnecting with old friends in the area and remeeting so many of the fabulous folks from last year's shows.

See you there!

Patterns and Colour

The late fall offers a range of patterns and colours that can be easily missed in the more flamboyant early fall and the garish summer.

This morning is a brisk, but not cold, overcast day, one that compelled a walk with camera in hand for a close look at small beauties.

Tiny cups and saucers are suggested by some of the fungus and the colours of quickly approaching Christmas in the other.

The growth on this decaying log seems to suggest that there is a whole micro-cosmic world of possibility in the small forest. For the insects that run rampant through it on warmer days, I am sure there is the same quest for food and shelter, lust and love, a battle of wills and stories of battles and survival that haunt our larger human world.

Bark always presents interesting colour and patterns and this is of a hole started by Pileated woodpeckers in a large hemlock. It has beat away the heavy bark layer and is now starting to peck away at the wood underneath. This is fresh activity because the wood is still very bright. The woodpeckers hunt for ants and other boring insects.

The slender branches of the wild cinnamon roses are a deep red and the leaves are surprisingly still on the bush, perhaps only now for a few more short days.

Fungi are perhaps some of the most interesting things to be examined. I particularly enjoyed this one that was growing on an old beech tree stump.


It is a banded and cascading thing of subtle beauty.

And perhaps the loveliest of the late fall blooms is the spidery yellow of the Witch Hazel. It waits in ordinary green leaves for the entire summer, and fades to autumn brown before breaking into a dynamic show after the first hard frost.

The hazel is like some people, it must first grow, and appear bland, then with the cruelty of life, the hardening in cold times, they burst open, blooming, exposing themselves for their real self. Colourful but hardy even if delicate in appearance.

For other images from today: http://www.mboot.net/imagetest.htm

© Cynthia Ryder 2008

Fun With O-rings

Once in awhile there is a custom order that really is fun to work on. There is both enough guidance and enough freedom to play and experiment and it is different enough that it shows new possibilities in other items.

Frankly I am not much of a chain person, but I like this one, nice large 18 gauge square wire for the links. It has a nice smooth feel to it. Alternating links have been oxidized creating a soft grey-black effect in the links. The somewhat too tightly linked weave that served as a prototype is my new bracelet. I really like the weight of it.



I have been making these knotted fine gauge sterling silver spheres for a couple of years now as those of you that follow my work know. As above I am back to figuring out a series a links to bring these time consuming little monsters, measuring 8-10 mm each, together into a chain. I am also a hardware/automotive store shopper in that there are good tools that can modified for the bench, and various bits of hardware that are really cool to look at. Bought an O-ring kit sometime in the past year and the a-ha moment happened...



And of course, the left-over rings from the first project had to be used somewhere and the mid-sized O-rings are just so tempting and combined with hematite, both open-eye linked across the O-rings and caged... great earrings.

Enjoy!
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© Cynthia Ryder 2008
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Bad music, bad scene

We just returned from a show in the Halifax region, Nova Scotia. Overall it was an interesting event but not highly successful for us.

Not only did we have the purported economic woes ravaging the attendees, but we had to endure psych warfare, a la Barney the Purple Dinosaur plays Iraq. We all know that music affects mood and we know that we will play certain types of music for certain occasions in order to match our own desired mood. The Barney reference stems from Ronson's Men Who Stare at Goats, for those that are curious.

The context for this particular Craft Show is that for the third year in a row, sales have declined, and attendance is nearing dismal proportions, and for the third year, a certain pair of "wailin' ginnys" has performed live at the show along with having their CD's on near constant rotation. I am not saying that music is the only thing that can make a show but I am now convinced that music has the ability to break one.

In this case, the ladies are not completely melodic nor are they particularly perky sounding. The lyrics to their Christmas music goes something like this: I'm happy you are coming home for Christmas (sniff sniff, moan groan) It's going to be a wonderful time (except now I have to cook a turkey dinner) I have wanted you home for so long now (but preferably at home in the graveyard) You have been missed at every dinner before (and I could really stand to miss you again) Welcome home for Christmas (but maybe I'll get lucky and get you with the car) this year..... All of these happy merry Christmas tunes sung to approximately the same melody in 4/4 time that took twice as long to play as it should.

My real issue with non-perky music at a show is that not only is it wearing on us as vendors, tiring us prematurely, but is also wearing on the attendees who have a substantial mood change with sad music. Hands go back in pockets, heads go down, frowns appear and the shopping stops cold. They soon wander back to their cars with morose spirits only to drive home with certainty that this was a bad show to attend, there was nothing worth looking at let alone buy, and the vendors were all cranky and tired, and there's just no point in going again.

So the thought for anyone planning a craft or arts show is that you should try really hard to have a nice upbeat mix of music, no operatic renditions of carols, no religious stuff, and no sad, sad tunes EVER!

The Hello Quizzy Art Test

Popped over to this site this morning for the following test, if nothing else, youi get to look at a series of nice art:

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test...

Non-conformist, Visionary, and Independent

16 Abstract, -13 Islamic, -3 Ukiyo-e, 5 Cubist, -14 Impressionist and -24 Renaissance!

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which exists independently of what may appear to others as visual realities. Western had been underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. It allowed the progressive thinking artists to show a different side to the world around them. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a 'new kind of art' which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. Abstract artists created art that was diverse and reflected the social and intellectual turmoil in all areas of Western culture.

People that chose abstract art as their preferred artform tend to be visionsaries. They see things in the world around them and in people that others may miss because they look beyond what is visual only with the eye. They rely on their inner thoughts and feelings in dealing with the world around them instead of on what they are told they should think and feel. They feel freed from the tendancy to be bound by traditional thought and experiences. They look more toward their own ideas and experiences than what they are told by their religious upbringing or from scientific evidence. They tend to like to prove theories themselves instead of relying on the insight or ideas of others. They are not bound by common and mundane, but like to travel and have new experiences. They value intelligence, but they also enjoy a challenge. They can be rather argumentative when they are being forced or feel as if they are being forced to conform.

Take What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test at HelloQuizzy

Deer Picnic

The joy of living in the woods is that we moved in with the critters. As in the spring, when the beans get mowed by rabbits, and the roses are pruned by the deer and the Asiatic lilies are lunch for both, the fall brings its own activity.

As of late we have had the chipmunks storing as much seed as possible. The beach nuts have been stripped from all the beach trees by the jays (blue & grey) and squirrels (red & grey) and any sunflower seeds that have been put out in the feeders have disappeared in mere minutes with jays, chickadees, squirrels and the chipmunks.

Like the country critters, we have been stockpiling for the winter too. I always like to get a big bag of mixed windfall apples which are very cheap and great for the freezer. The apple peelings offer another treat for the denizens of the forest as the cores are loved by the squirrels and the peels are grabbed and carried off to the tree tops by the jays in their expectation that they will remember where they left them.

This morning brought the visual delight of 3 deer having a picnic at the old table at the back of the garden where I put the peels yesterday.


It started with two...


and then a third joined in...


It looks as though there was a single and a doe with her fawn judging by the size difference and the fact that the single didn't go exploring the rest of the garden like the two

Enjoy!

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recycling

Have you ever noticed how some things just keep coming 'round. People who cycle in and out of your life. Here for a time, gone, back again, gone, back.... and the cycle continues.

Have you ever noticed that that there are times when we have a problem that continues to present itself months or years after the initial problem. It keeps recurring in one form or another but it stays the same problem.

Or a question that keeps occurring...


What is that recycling of events, people, problems or questions trying to teach us. I figure that there is a lesson somewhere in my recycling problem that I have yet to learn, and I have yet to figure out what it is.

If you have figured out a good way to get to the bottom of your recurring problem, let me know.

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Art lessons...

... are paying off.

A long time friend of mine, Carole Forbes, teaches her own pen & ink drawing method. She just returned from out west a few months ago and since I have been finally getting braver about my own art, I decided to treat myself to some lessons. Been enjoying it immensely.

Here is the result, an original no less:

Another friend shot a pic of this tree last summer while out on a road trip. I really liked the gnarly old pine, so I used it as the basis for this drawing, changed a few things, "artistic license" after all, but the result is not too bad after only 5 weeks.

Enjoy!

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