There has been a lot going on around here over the last couple of months: workshops, receptions, building stuff, feeding the cats — haven’t had time to blog. We have been working like crazy on our new workshop/studio space, Blue Taller Studio, unfortunately it wasn’t ready this past weekend for our encaustic workshops, however, we held the classes in the gallery and it worked out beautifully. We had a great turnout of eager, talented participants. It was so much fun and so encouraging to work with so many committed photographers that are as stimulated by encaustic as we are. We especially want to send a shout out to our friend Vicky Richardson Reed for inspiring us with her wonderful encaustic images. 

The weekend of May 30th and 31st was fantastic with Fran Forman and Tami Bone teaching workshops in conjunction with the reception for the exhibition “Magic”. It was Magic. Fran juried the show and chose a great group of images. Her gallery talk was one of the best we’ve had and got folks participating and rhapsodically waxing aesthetic. Fran and Tami’s classes were enthusiastically attended and, according to the participants, very informative and life changing. Fran is a wonderful instructor, showing others how to also create magic. Tami got her participants to dive into the pool of themselves and come up with personal epiphanies and insights into the “why” of their art — I sat through part of her class and it was fantastic. Little Johnson City was very lucky to have these two creative forces in town. And last but not least, the irrepressible, creative fun champion, Judy Sherrod, showed up and parked her Shootapalooza Art Bar Airstream in front of the gallery and led everyone in creating lumen prints with broccoli, peppers, cabbage etc. There were visitors all over the gallery, smiling, holding an onion, a sprig of cilantro or some other item of produce. Thanks Judy. 

Saturday June 28th was the opening reception for “Downtown”. The juror, Peter Liepke, selected a very compelling group of images for the show. I was touched and sparked by Tami Bone’s workshop at the previous reception and we decided to have a gallery talk in the same vein. Right out of the shoot, Pierre Cook started talking about his photo of a fellow sitting, playing the guitar with a passerby just passing by in the foreground — turns out Pierre is a musician with certain feelings about the passerby just passing by….Tami’s on to something, the “why” of it is a good question. Later we went to dinner with a local photographer and her husband — he was a competitive diver in college.  Turns out he now builds swimming pools. Very interesting. The final reception for “Downtown” is July 26th. 

Well, back to work on the new studio, see ya.