Art in Nature 7 '10

Ever notice how nature can always "out art" mankind when it comes to creative design?

Just look at the beautiful design in the grain of this weathered wood bench.

BIG NEWS! You can see CC's work at Island Art Gallery 7 '10

After viewing  eight of her paintings, the owners of Island Art Gallery on Pawleys Island have agreed to represent her work. The Gallery is located right next to the major tourist attraction of the Hammock Shops  on Highway 17.    It has good visibility from the highway , lots of foot traffic, and does a steady  business..

She promptly stripped our living room walls of the Pawley's Island Series and took them over to the Gallery . They gave her  a great wall which is well lit both by Northern facing Windows and gallery lighting.  Her paintings will be able to be seen from almost every place in the gallery except the classroom..  Her only concern right now is being able to paint enough paintings to be able to keep the walls filled and to  be able to rotate the work on a regular basis.

While the owners do not demand that their artists offer only low country subject matter, many of the paintings do focus on that theme, so my work will fit well with the tone of the gallery.  The other artists, with whom she will share the gallery, are highly skilled and offer very professional looking work.  CC is  very pleased to be in such good company.

BJ win Golf Tournament 7 '10

Does BJ look happy?  Well he has cause. 

He and his team came in second place in the Fourth of July tournament.

Happy fourth of July 7 '10

Happy Fourth of July, everybody

From our house to yours!

Hunting Island State Park 6'10

Sunday and Monday saw us going to Hunting Island State Park for an overnight   photo shoot. We have been to this South Carolina State Park before, but it was in the winter  months and CC wanted to collect some reference photos that would be representative of what the typical visitors to the Park might see.

CC wasn't disappointed....

The road  to the Visitor Center is lush and tropical at this time of year

The  sky was filled with cumulus clouds giving me wonderful  beach/sky scenes.

Sunday's sunset and Monday's sunrise were spectacular:

The beach scenes were awesome

Even the wildlife cooperated and put on a good show.

CC came away with loads of ideas for paintings .

God must be laughing at me. 6 '10

A funny thing happened at Hunting Island State Park. On our way into Hunting Island State Park BJ and I stopped at the Visitor Center . I was looking at some small prints of a panting of the park's campground showing some tents with a deer grazing in front of it. "Kinda romanticized isn't it? I've never seen a deer here", I snickered. "There could be", my husband, Bruce laughed. "If we have them on our golf course, they probably have them here."

  ( Above) Later in the day, while I was photographing a beach path to the campgrounds, a doe nonchalantly walked right in front of me and into the scrub beside the RV campground. I could hear God giggling.
( Below) Then later on I spied a whole herd of deer browsing around the tent campground. God must have been rolling on the ground in laughter. Bruce certainly was. Well At least II now know that I can  safely put some wildlife into my Park Series.

Charleston Artists and Craftsmen Supply '10

I've made a wonderful discovery.  Charleston South Carolina has a terrific art supply store right across from Marion Square.   You can't begin to understand how happy this makes me.  Before this discovery, the nearest large art supply stores that I knew about were in Colombia, SC  (3 hours drive) and Raleigh, NC (4 + hours drive).  That's not exactly a quick run to the store. 

Sure, in a pinch  I can always go to AC Moore,  Michael's Crafts, or  a couple of small mom and pop stores in my area for a tube of titanium white paint, but just try to get an unusual brush or  an odd size canvas in a hurry from any vendor nearby. Ha! 

I've had to  rely upon the online superstores for any unique supplies.  Not that I have anything against online shopping if I know exactly what I want, and have the time to wait for it.  Unfortunately,  sometimes  the only way to know for sure whether a brush or paint will meet my needs is to talk to a real live person, or to be able to examine the supply in person. For example I've been needing a fan brush for a specific project, but it had to be a stiff enough to do the job ( and I had no way to calibrate bristle stiffness).  I just couldn't be sure of what I was finding online,  but it took me less than two minutes to find the right stiffness when I could feel the bristles. 

So no more guessing for me.  This place is an hour away,  and seems to have a nice selection of all things arty. It won't be too much effort to make a run once a month. If I coordinated with some artist friends it could even be a nice outing.  You can check the place out yourself by clicking on the title to this post which is linked to their website, or visit them at:

Artist and Craftsmen Supply 143 Calhoun St.

Charleston, SC 29401

» Get Directions

Toll Free: 877.560.4507Phone: 843.579.0077

Fax: 843.579.0078 

Hours

M-F 9 AM - 8 PM

Sat & Sun 10 AM - 7 PM

How to Survive a Heat Wave 6'10

We're in the midst of  a record breaking heat wave... Seven continuous days with temperatures above 90  degrees was the past record for June days in this area.  We've already more than doubled that, and there is no end in sight.  Several days last week broke the old record for highest temperatures on record.   With what is called "the heat index factor" (which means humidity, heavy air pressure, and lack of clouds), mid-day feels about 10 degrees hotter than what the thermometer is reading.  Nights aren't much better.  About the lowest it has dropped to is 80 at night.  Thank goodness for AC.  Well almost.... ours went out  for several days last week.

"So how does one survive one of the worst heat waves on record without AC?",  you ask.

 My answer:   Seal of as much of the outside heat as possible, eat fresh (no cooking) , drink lots of fluids,  stay in the coolest rooms, do minimal movement, and have lots of fans blowing into the room you are using.  The  other trick is to do something that takes your mind off of the temperatures.   In my case,  I painted beach scenes.... lots of them. You can see a one of them below.  The rest will show up on my website as soon as I can get them loaded..

One of the projects on my list of to-dos this year  was to paint a series of small format paintings that I could take to local sidewalk shows.  I  also had been wanting to experiment with a minimalist and almost abstract approach . I decided to work upon a series of big skies with clouds reflecting onto the wet beach.   I guess all of that water and cool colors seemed the right thing to think about when it was really hot.  I got eight  8"x 8" canvases painted while the AC was out (about two a day).

Only one of the five days we were without an AC, did I find it too hot too work in the studio. I had been painting near a window so I wouldn't warm up the studio with artificial lighting.  When the temperature reached 98 outside the heat radiating in through the blinds on the window was overwhelming me.  I retreated into my husbands office  and sketched out a 16" x 20" beach scene to scale to paint on another day.

Bookgreen's 2010 Art Craft Fair

Above:  Welcome Center Portico Exhibits  Included  Anne Malarich's Photography

Brookgreen Gardens usually hosts its annual Art Craft Fair the first week in June.  We  attended last year as a collector and was impressed with the quality of the work.

Below:  Welcome Center Circle Tents Exhibits included Some Moles Fused Glass Art and Terry Lee Johnson's beautiful turned Wooden Bowls

We  planned on attending this year  with the mindset  of someone who might want to be an exhibit in next year's show. I reasoned that if nothing else, the attending the show would give CC  a chance to scout the determine if she wanted to apply next year.  And of course,  she can always use an extra reference photo or two for her local landmark series on this popular destination.

Above: Jeff Sturm Demonstrated his oil painting techniques

Below:  Watercolorist Nancy Van Buren  talks with a customer about her art.

That being said, we are truly glad we did make the time to go to this show.  We would recommend it to any art lover.   It is really one of the better art events in the community.

Below: Shirley Lawling's Oil Paintings.

Thursday Evenings at the Ebb and Flow 5 '10

I've been scouting local outlets looking for an appropriate local outlet for my paintings. As you may remember from the first time I visited,  The Ebb and Flow Gallery Coop  it was early in the day, and there was no one else in the gallery.  

 My husband, Bruce puts in a long day in his home office on Thursdays. He starts at 8 am and often doesn't get off of work before 7 pm. Clearly after a day like that anything that gets him house of the house, and thinking about something other than computers, is a good thing. He loves music so as soon as he clocked out, it wasn't hard to talk him into going out a local hot spot for live entertainment.

First stop -- the Ebb and Flow Gallery in Murrell's Inlet.

I've been scouting local outlets looking for an appropriate local outlet for my paintings. As you may remember from the first time I visited,  The Ebb and Flow Gallery Coop  it was early in the day, and there was no one else in the gallery.   I wanted to revisit it at a higher traffic time.  On Thursday evenings the gallery has a live folk musicians, complementary wine,

 

 and will brew up a wide selection of fresh coffee drinks.

  It was really pleasant... much like stepping back into the 60s and 70s when folk singers and coffee shops were the 'in' social centers of many communities.  I will check it out again in the the future..

Murrells Inlet at Night 5 '10

What do you think of this photo ( Above) as a basis for a nocturne ?
It was  taken in the early evening at Murrells Inlet, SC

Poor Babies 'May '10

Poor babies! 

 They had a rough day at the office (aka golf course).

Golf on the holiday 5 31'10

 One of the big advantages of living on a golf course is that you don't have to fight traffic. Bruce celebrated the holiday with a round of golf.

Swan Lake Arts and Crafts Show 5 '10

Sumter, SC has been hosting and Arts and Crafts Show at its the annual Iris Festival which is held at Swan Lake Park.  It was CC's Artist Date for this week..

First of all we  wanted to see the Iris.  The last time we visited the gardens the Iris had not yet begun to bloom.  But they should be at their peak of bloom right now and CC really wanted to get some reference photos.

While the iris were definitely in  full bloom, we were disappointed in how few  blooms there were growing around the lake.  The we discovered why.   It seems that the Lake's other famous attraction .. i.e. swans have a craving for iris blooms. CC  watched the hefty fella  below munch down a half dozen just while she was standing there.

No wonder the park has fencing around so many of its flowers.

Our second reason for going was to scout out whether CC wanted to consider an entry into  the Arts and Crafts Show in 2011. 

There were a fair number of  fine art craft vendors selling .. glass , wearable art, woodwork  and a variety of other crafts.  There was only one full time painter, and one person who had some paintings and some crafts     (below).  Both said their  low cost reproductions had sold quite well.

While we both  enjoyed the day, the  Art Craft Show itself did not seem to be the right venue for CC's work..

Porpita Porpitas 5 '10

On this morning 's  walk on Pawleys Island, we found the beach strewn with  the carcasses of hundreds of small blue colored  creatures.

Their upper 'body' structure  was gelatinous and roughly an inch  in diameter

and was surrounded by what looks suspiciously like tentacles?

Hmmm ?  Could this be a form of Jelly fish???

A scan of the internet solved the mystery.

The creature  was a Porpita porpita.  Porpita porpita, "commonly known as the blue button, is a marine organism consisting of a colony of hydroids.found in tropical  waters from California to the tropical Pacific, and Indian ocean.  The species has made its way through the Suez canal and is now populating the tropical waters of the Gulf of Mexico

It is often mistaken for a jellyfish, but although jellyfish and the blue buttons are part of the same  the blue button is part of the  phylum (Cnidaria), the blue button is part of the class Hydrozoa.

It  lives on the surface of the sea and consists of two main parts: the float and the hydroid colony. The hard golden-brown float is round, almost flat, and about one inch wide. The hydroid colony, resembles tentacles like those of the jellyfish.   Each strand has numerous branchlets, each of which ends in knobs of stinging cells called nematocysts. The blue button sting is not powerful but may cause irritation to human skin It is often mistaken for a jellyfish, but although jellyfish and the blue buttons are part of the same  the blue button is part of the  phylum (Cnidaria), the blue button is part of the class Hydrozoa."*

Apparently  the passive little drifter has been using the Gulf Stream to expand its territory to the tropical waters of the Caribbean and the Atlantic coastline touched by the Gulf stream e.g., Florida, and now South Carolina

*More information is available on the Porpita at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpita_porpita

Evening out in Murrells Inlet 5 '10

Murrells Inlet is a colorful little fishing port by day.

 Bruce and I decided to go there in the early evening to  watch the sun go down

  and the fleet come in (including  his favorite dive boat .. the Scuba Express)

 

 The thing about Murrells Inlet is that  it turns into a entertainment hotspot by night.

 

 Lots of open air restaurants line  the Marina

And a board walk runs between them making it easy to stroll between them and listen to the live  bands performing along the way

It's a pleasant way to spend a warm  evening

CCampbellsfineart.com Website Launched

www.ccampbellsfineart.com
Last March, I applied for a SC State business license to open C Campbell's Fine Art in South Carolina. My initial competitive analysis had turned up only a limited set of outlets for selling my paintings this area, so one of my goals was to broaden my market through selling my paintings over the Internet.

In California, I had had a small website devoted to plein air painting built for me. There were so many outlets for my work in the Southern California market, that my website was primarily for professional image and only secondarily for sales. I had kept up the license for the domain after I moved to South Carolina, so that I didn't lose the right to the CCampbellsFine Art domain name. But I hadn't made a single update to the sites simple design. Clearly I was going to need something more sophisticated if I intended to actively sell over the web.

I began the update project by researching a wide range of other artist websites. Some seemed highly appealing but were so sophisticated that I suspected they were being maintained by the website staff of a commercial galleries representing the artist.. Others were equally attractive but were clearly home grown. I made notes on what I liked and did not like, and what I thought were most effective features of each.

I also read everything I could find posted on sites like Empty Easel about selling on the Internet and comparing that information to what I was finding on the other artists websites. Eventually I came up with a list of things I wanted to include on the website.

That was just the beginning. Next I had come up with a physical design (the easy part) and then choose / learn a software application to implement that design (Aaaarrrrgh). I eventually settled on MS Frontpage web building application. There are more sophisticated applications but (#1) we already have a license (which I've now upgraded to MS Share point) , and (#2) it was similar to other applications that I already know so the learning curve was less steep. I worked on the simple pages first ( Bio, Contact Me etc.) Then began tackling the inserting the pages for the paintings themselves.

Simultaneously, I began photographing all of my new series, scripting each of the paintings descriptions , and finalizing a pricing scheme. One thing I learned from my research is to 'keep it simple and consistent'. By clustering the paintings into related themes, and pricing based upon the low end of what the average painting of that the size is going for in my area, I could sell in both galleries and on the web without channel conflict. Granted, I will have less profit from sales in galleries, but that's my problem.

Last but not least I set up a Pay Pal account and linked each of the paintings on the pages to the Pay Pal Account.

Of course then I had to:

1. Test it locally on our home intranet.
2. Remedy any formatting or link errors.
3. Retest,
4. then upload it to the Network Service provider
5. Repeat steps 1 - 3 on the Service Providers intranet
6. Pull the site up on the www and test (etc).

Unfortunately, we had some link problems that didn't show up until we went to the Internet, so a third round of corrections were necessary. It took two months of work, but finally my CCampbellsFineArt website is up and running and my paintings are available for you to look at.

You can go to it my clicking on the title of this post.

C Campbells Fine Art Open Studio Reception 5 '10

 I ( Cece) belong to a fair number of social organizations: a book club, a gardening group, four local artist guilds, dine around, not to mention the country club, etc. I am constantly being asked for an invitation to view my paintings. I'd love to invite each and every one of them over for dinner. It would be fun, and great word of mouth publicity, but that much entertaining would unquestionably interfere with my painting schedule. Such a dilemma! What to do? What to do?

Then I remembered the popularity of Open Studio Receptions in California to show off one's work. The event is a cross between a social open house, and a art gallery solo exhibit reception. The focus is on the art, and how it is created, without the hard sales pitch.

I sent out 60 invitations in April for a May 23rd 3 - 6 pm Open Studio Reception. This first set of invitations went to people who had expressed an interest in seeing my work. I also mentioned the event at each of my social organizations, and asked anyone who would like to receive an invitation to put their contact information on a list. From this , I followed through with another 15 invites. Frankly, at this point I was getting a little nervous, as there is no street parking where I live (my neighbors came to the rescue and offered their driveways for the event).

I'm not likely to tackle an event that large in my home very often, so I decided to go all out. The paintings were clustered into themes ( e.g. Local Landmark Series, Pawley's Plantation Series, etc.) Below Pawleys Plantation Series and one of State Park Series.
















My husband, Bruce helped me hang as many of the paintings from each series as the space on the wall would allow.

















Above: Graphics and Abstract Art

Below: Part of the Local Landmark Series




















Power point presentations were run in a loop on two televisions to visually convey things that the visitors might want to know (e.g. On one TV I had a presentation showing a photograph of each painting followed by a photograph of the area each represented. )





















In the Carolina room, all of the California Plein Air Series were on display, and Plein air oil painting equipment was set up for guests to inspect.




















In the Art Studio Miniature Paintings were on display, and each of the different work areas were set up with the equipment I would use and examples of the results.
















Above: Water media work area and paintings.

Below Oil Painting Work area



































Above: Still Life set up with miniature still life example

Below: Art Photo stand with illustrated directions







































Above: Composition Sketch White Board




















Above: Desk and business work area

Below Mobile Media cart




















Well you know what they say about the best laid plans. The skies had been clear and beautiful the entire week before the reception. Sunday morning we awoke to dark skies, and warnings flashing the the TV that people should stay home due to the possibility of tornadoes, hail and wind. By the time the Open Studio Reception was to begin there was a torrential downpour coming down. Needless to say we did not get  a huge  turnout, but given the circumstances, more people came than I would have expected in the storm.

We all had a good time, and all I gave lots of tours. All our guests were very enthusiastic about my work, and took a lot of business cards to spread the word.. And the good news is that I now have all the materials (right down to the Parking signs with my Business logos) ready should I choose to have an Open Studio event of any size.