Art and Trips

 I have been on a couple of short trips lately. It was good to get away and see old friends and make new ones. 

On Facebook I keep up with an old friend from when we lived in Vernon, TX. That was when Bo was little and I was pregnant with Jesse. Alvin had a hardware store in the old downtown part of Vernon. It was funky old stone building with a second floor overlooking the bottom floor and lots of junk  - junk galore! In the back of the store, he had an old pot bellied stove with chairs around it. I used to love to go see Alvin and just sit and visit. Many times I had Bo with me while he played around the store. After I had Jesse, it was still a favorite place to go and sit in a rocking chair with Jesse. We moved from Vernon when Jesse was almost a year old. We saw Alvin one other time in all these past 40 years. We just lost touch. But Facebook is good for something - finding old friends. 

So, We found Alvin on Facebook. He is a junker these days. He has several booths at different antique market places from Ft. Worth to Wichita Falls. We have been in touch via the Internet for several years. A few years ago, he met up with Jesse for lunch in WF. He said that he really enjoyed that meeting.  Anyway, last week he posted that it was his 73 birthday and that he was having a junk sale at his house out in the country around Bowie, TX. We decided to surprise him. And surprise him we did. It was great to see him and catch up a bit. The visit wasn't long enough, but when so much time has gone by, we either needed a week to catch up or just enough time to say all is well and lets try to do better on seeing each other. We did the latter. 

As we left, I looked on Google maps and saw that St. Jo was pretty much straight north. We decided to drive that way and see the Davis Blevins Gallery where Donna Howell-Sickles has her studio and art. We missed seeing Donna, but I did visit with the lady running the store/gallery. We got to talking and she is a member of the Wichita Falls Art Association. She opened up the gallery/studio part of the building just for Toby and I to see the real art. I was in heaven. It was fun visiting with the gallery lady and seeing the art. Then we drove on north to the bridge-to-nowhere and crossed over into Oklahoma. It is a beautiful drive and fun day.

Then last Wednesday, I got up and drove to Amarillo to see my sister and help her with her San Jacinto Neighborhood Association Art Show. I put two pieces of art in the show (shown on previous posts). I got to Amarillo around noon. Immediately, we went to work setting up an old funky event place for the art show. We used a lot of easels rather than the walls or screens. It was a lot of work. In typical artist fashion several of the artist waited until the last possible minute to turn in their art, and of course, some were very late.  Thursday saw my sister and me running around town doing errands and finishing up with the preparations for the show. Then we had to hustle to get cleaned up for the show and get there to open up for the judges. 

It all went off without a hitch. I met lots of new people, artists, etc. My niece was there with her husband, and my sister's in-laws and family were there too. We all sat together and enjoyed the free food and drinks as well as tacos from a taco truck. There was some really good art, too. Fun times on Route 66. They had many categories for ribbons. There was no prize money - this was a fund raiser for the non-profit neighborhood group. Most of the artist donated the sell of their paintings to the fund raiser. I bet they sold about ten paintings that night. The art show lasts thru Saturday.

So one of my paintings won best Storyteller.

I had painted from an old newspaper ad where Cal Farley, of  Cal Farley's Boys Ranch, had a tire shop on Route 66. It was a black and white photo of him airing up an airplane tire. My dad loved Cal Farley's Boys Ranch and contributed to them often. We sometimes stopped and visited there on our way to and from the mountains.

The other painting sold to the Amarillo Art Committee who voted to buy my painting of the old fire station on Route 66 to hang in the Amarillo City building. Apparently, the Art Committee does lots of things for the City of Amarillo. I thought both the Storyteller ribbon and the sell of my art were real honors. 

So I had lots of fun with my sister and the art show was a success too. It was so nice to get out of town - twice. And the weather turned cooler as a cold front blew through and dropped some needed rain. It dropped snow in the high mountains. Snow and aspen trees! Wouldn't that have been fun, too?