"Contented" 13 x 14 Watercolor. I got to work on this painting of my father today. It's been too many days since I have picked up the brush! I'm not used to that!
The last few days sure has been a flurry of excitement and scary all wrapped up into one!
First, this past weekend was the Arts in the Park in Belfast, Maine. A two day festival, usually my best show out of all of them....had stormy weather. Saturday found us watching dark low full clouds head towards us on the Ocean front. It dumped a few down pours on us, but nothing we couldn't handle. Once the rain let up to a slow sprinkle, the crowds returned.
Sunday was the death sentence hammered down upon us! It rained hard off and on throughout the day. But by the time 3pm rolled around on the ticking clock...all heck broke loose. The heavens dumped on us and being stationed at the bottom of a very steep hill next to the ocean, well...there was only one way all that water was going to gush...down hill towards the ocean! And it showed no mercy for anyone in it's path.
I hurried to pack the art, and poke at the tent top with a shovel handle to push the pooled water off my roof. I feared of a collapsed tent, but it held on! I laid a tarp on a high place of grass in my tent and lined the cardboard boxes up and started sliding the framed works into them. Next thing I knew, when I turned around, the water was gushing over the tarp and all around the base of my boxes, and around my ankles!. I quickly moved them to my 6 foot table! but oh, the water ran out of the bottom of them. I feared for the art the whole time. Once everything was up on the table, I had to walk up that rushing hill of water to the parking lot where my van was hanging on for dear life! The man hole covers danced to their own music as the water gushed up out of the holes, forcing them to float and clang. I had to drive into the park at a further away entrance and between me and my tent was several large murky ponds that had to be crossed and zig zag around other tents that were desperately pleading to be folded up and packed away! Every fiber of my being was telling me not to drive through those ponds, but I had to. I had to rescue my art! I made it. whew! I piled the tent and art the best I could and all of my soggy contents, into the van, while my toes squished in my sneakers and my clothes stuck to me like a surgical glove! I climbed into the van...only to cross those ponds again and try to get up over a steep knoll where cars & trucks before me had created mud holes that a pig would be proud to own! I found an area that wasn't churned up by rubber tires and got my van up there and out of there!
Before I could head home, I had to go to the boat house and pick up my paintings from the Penobscot Bay Carvers & Artists 'Maine Coast Competition' that was going on the same weekend. There I found that my watercolor "American Kestrel" (pictured above) had won First Place, Best of Show, and People's Choice Awards! Wow!
And the oil painting "Zebra's new day" picked up a Second. The watercolor "Sun soakers, Harbor Seals" took a Second also! That was a very happy surprise from all the drama that played out earlier.
But, Still, I worried about what was happening to my art in the van in those wet boxes! I drove home as quickly as I could without hydroplaning!
When I got them out of the boxes, only a couple paintings needed the dust cover paper replaced on the backs of the frames! Everything survived, except for a few cardboard boxes that got dragged off to the pile of wet doom. I came into the house and peeled my shoes off and ringed my socks out in the sink!
Monday I spent the whole day drying out the tent and van and everything else in between. What a mess! But it is all dry now.
Monday afternoon my parents stopped in to let me know they had donated a painting I had done of my dad and other 'Tally-Ho" riders to the Morrill Maine Historical Society Museum! I grew up in the town of Morrill, spent about 27 years there and only live a couple miles away now. My dad spent a lot of his childhood in Morrill, growing up also, and a lot of ancestors lived there and in surrounding towns.The painting is a watercolor and depicts the Tally-Ho riders out for a ride on horseback, trotting up the dirt road towards the viewer. I'm so pleased they donated it. The presentation took place last night. So now I can say that I am in a Museum Collection! And one that is near and dear to my heart.
This coming Saturday, July, 17th, I'll have my booth at the Waterville, Maine Sidewalk art festival. I'm hoping for a lot less eventful weather prediction, but it's not looking to good so far! ha ha. We shall see. Rain date is Sunday the 18th. And I have purchased large lawn garbage bags to cover each work of art with!
Have a great evening!
Debbie
