Summer started early with a visit with my mom in the Philadelphia area for the first ten days of June, then the last two weeks of June we traveled to visit my brother and family in Anchorage, Alaska! It was such a special trip, starting with the unbelievable luck we had with the weather, which is notoriously unreliably summer-like during actual summer.
We got to experience sunshine, breezes and temperatures in the mid-sixties every day, so we went out for hikes most days we were there. My brother and his wife bought us a surprise wildlife cruise from the Seward Harbor through the Kenai Fjords, Resurrection Bay, and out to the Gulf of Alaska for four hours. We got to see puffins and other migratory birds, sea lions, sea otters, an orca who swam under our boat, and mother and baby humpback whales swimming through the bay. Plus the landscape of that area was so beautiful – steep fjords, coves with little sandy beaches, mountains, islands, a glacier, and this almost magical inlet with rock formation islands with their own little ecosystems, called Spire Cove.
Of course I had my sketchbook and watercolors with me for all of this. Lots of photos below.
First, I will be teaching an early Fall 1 session of my mixed media classes at the Oak Park Art League, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and that session begins the week of August 12! Soon! Normally there is a late summer break in August and the Fall 1 session starts after Labor Day, but this year we are skipping that. I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom! Register here.
I will be part of a group show coming up on the weekend of October 11-13! My critique group of artists, The Groundwater Collective, who I have been meeting with for ten years, will be having a Pop-Up Exhibit of our latest work at The Carriage House Gallery at OPAL. We will take over the whole gallery for three days while they are in between monthly shows. Details of the opening and gallery hours to follow ….
I will also be offering two workshops October 19 and November 9, one Botanical Gel Plate Printing and Mixed Media and the other Mixed Media Oracle Cards for 2025. Stay tuned for details. They are on the calendar but they are not open for registration yet.
