art party With my artist/friend Faye Collins from NC in town last week it seemed a good time to have some other women art/friends over for a potluck, art talk and general hilarity. It made me reflect a bit on the importance to me of my artist friends far and wide. While our actual work is very diverse, it's things like creative process and the ups and downs of art careers that we bond over.

The internet has so expanded the opportunities to "meet" other artists and also to reconnect with art friends from the past. A few of my own stories: I emailed painter Cheryl Lins about a year ago, after seeing her work on the website The Art Fix --I had to tell her how much I loved her remarkable abstract watercolors. We've been corresponding ever since...a highlight of my upcoming trip to NY City in March will be meeting her in person. Anthony Falcetta(he is quoted on the home page of my website)is a terrific painter and writer who somehow manages to occupy the same mental art wavelength as I do. Glenn Ossiander is another painter whose work I feel instictive connection with. Along with Anthony, I "met" Glenn on an online forum, artscuttlebutt.org I've had less involved email correspondence with several other artists across the country, from Austin to New Orleans..I wouldn't know them if I passsed them on the street, unfortunately for both of us, but have had quite in-depth conversations. Someone that I actually have met, a wonderful painter from a diffferent area of Wisconsin, and with whom I've had great conversations since is Gregg Rochester.

I also want to mention Timothy Chapman and Davis Birks (google him, he doesn't have his own website but he's out there and an amazing painter)both of whom I knew when I was a graduate student at Arizona State. I hadn't seen or heard from either for 20 years, but in the past year Davis sent an email and I later found Tim online. I could go on, and probably should! All this makes me realize that I really need to get the "art friends" link on my website up and running.

Anyway, in my experience the art party can be about as big and far reaching and ongoing as you care to make it. Cheers!

  ¶ 11:47 AM