My first juried acceptance brings honorable mention

The Model - watercolor and pencil

Last year I entered a piece for consideration in a juried show and it wasn't selected.  No problem. I basically did it for the experience, having never gone through the process before. I didn't expect to get selected.

Recently, I submitted three pieces to the New River Art Biennial Juried Exhibition which opened last night..  Two of the three pieces I really thought had a strong chance and I added "The Model" to complete my allowed three entries.  Much to my surprize, "The Model" made the cut and then, last night, I was surprized again when the piece was presented an Honorable Mention!  Entries totalled 150 pieces by 53 artists.  The juror selected 39 pieces for exhibit and presented 11 awards.  I feel truly honored to be among those 11.

After having also won a third place in July, I'm hoping this jump starts my creativity which has been in more than a little slump lately.  Time to go clean up my studio, get the cobwebs out of my head, ignore the laundry and dusting and get back to acting like an artist.  There is just never enough time for all the things I should be doing.

A tribute to 9/11

In remembrance of 9/11, I am posting the following which I wrote for the first anniversary of the tragedy.  I delivered it to my fellow employees of the Defense Commissary Agency, Europe, region headquarters, located on Kapaun Air Station, in Kaiserslautern, Germany.  Following completion of these comments, we held one minute of silence.
 
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I am an American.

It is sometimes easy for Americans to think 9-11 only happened to them. It was our buildings, our planes, our cities, our country, our people.

Who are our people?

Our people are of many colors, many races, many countries and many religions…or no religion at all. We are William and Gerlinde and Mohammed and Nejat and Nolasco. We are Maria and Riccardo. We lead our lives in many different ways and yet we are the same. We work, play, love, laugh, cry, live and die.

In the days following 9-11, I felt as though I moved through life watching a bad movie. I expected it to end so I could walk out of the theater into the sun and know everything was normal again. I did not want to believe nothing would ever be truly normal again.

I looked into the eyes of German friends and saw they shared my tears. I heard the emotion in the voice of an elderly man in my village who told me he was sorry…as though he personally had done something to make me sad.

I saw the many flowers adorning walls, fences and gates presented to us by Europeans who shared our pain. I saw strangers in the early days after the attack that looked at me as an American and did not know what to say to make it better. Somehow just their look of understanding soothed the heartbreak.

In an Egyptian restaurant in Baden Baden I talked with the owner as he looked at his near empty restaurant on a Saturday night and told me he did not do this awful thing. I wanted to make him feel better so I told him of my warm reception in his country. Tears came to his eyes as he thanked me and said “you have made my heart sing.”

I came to Europe an American, hungry to see the world. Today I am a different American…I am British, Dutch and Belgian. I am Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Turkish, Saudi and Egyptian. Mostly, I am German, taught by my many German friends who have opened their hearts and homes to me. I am international and I am glad.

9-11 happened to all of me. It happened to all of us.


Written by Gerri Young
September 9, 2002
For 9-11 tribute ceremony

Long time, no blog

Yes, I've been busy but I've also been uninspired!  Looked at my blog several times over the last month but my fingers wouldn't move.  So here's a little update or two.

My painting called "Shadow Woman" shown in my Jan 28, 2011, blog post won a third place in the Blacksburg Regional Art Association's "Expressions" exhibit in VTLS on 1701 Kraft Drive in Blacksburg (inside the Corporate Research Center area).  It was one of 52 pieces.  I was amazed and pleased!  Made all the work necessary for that watercolor batik seem very worthwhile.

I've been painting iris notecards for the St. Pierre Gallery in Floyd and every one of them sells.  Decided I needed to make some printed cards because it is difficult to always produce enough originals.  I took my two newest with me to add some finishing touches while working the gallery last Friday and, just as I finished, a lady bought both of them!  Maybe it pays to be working on art while working the gallery, but sometimes it is just too busy to do that.

On a funny and un-art-centric note--Bill and I walked a couple blocks of Blacksburg last night after attending a movie at the Lyric.  It was a lovely evening for a stroll.  Apparently the wildlife thought so, too.  As we turned a corner on Draper Road to head to our car, there was a bushy skunk on the lawn across from the Farmer's Market.  He paid no attention to us as he involved himself in digging holes in the grass, aided by the glow from the streetlights.  We paid close attention to him as we gave him a very wide berth and made it to the car without incident.

Our friendly, but hungry deer

A couple weeks ago a very friendly deer starting coming around our house. She seems to have very little fear of humans.  One morning she walked right up on our front porch and proceeded to eat every potted plant arranged there as though it were her private buffet.  As much as I enjoy opportunities to see wildlife up close, I must admit I was quite upset at the ruination of all my work.  No deer had been brazen enough to walk on the porch before so I considered it a "safe" bet to garden.

This deer loves the clover by our front door and will graze for 15-20 minutes with us just standing outside and watching from no more than 30 feet away.  In the video, she is about six feet from the house.  I truly don't care if she munches the clover.  There is plenty of it, but when she crosses the edging and starts feasting on my flower bed it is another story entirely!  She seems to start early in the morning so I have started checking all the windows from the moment I get up and sometimes race outside with arms and pink, fuzzy bathrobe flapping wildly.  She trots away about 50 feet, stops to look back at me and I can almost hear her say, "I'll be back!" as she twitches her white tail and flutters her wonderful eyelashes in my direction.  Is that an impatiens branch hanging down below her glistening black nose?

Life in the forest

There seems to always be something going on with wildlife in the forest surrounding us. Sometimes those goings on have a direct impact on me.

I planted several dozen impatiens in an effort to have a garden behind a fence of deer screening.  The deer have ignored them completely so far.  Is there such a thing as racoon screening? Trying to be a good little green person I used organic fertilizer to plant my new annuals.  That night something dug up in between every plant and ate the fertilizer.  I filled the holes back in.  The next morning, the next set of plants were not only dug up (inside the deer screening area), but the plants were seemingly laid carefully aside and the fertilizer eaten again.  I'm assuming a racoon did this, considering their very capable little paws.  It's hard enough for me to plant these days without having to plant the same plants twice!

We have been providing suet blocks for the birds and especially enjoy watching the woodpeckers they attract.  Suddenly, the blocks were disappearing at an unusually fast pace.  We couldn't help but wonder what was causing this because our bird population in May has been dramatically lower than in April.  Not lower is the number of huge black crows visiting our feeder area. Too big for the feeders, they normally just enjoy the seeds tossed to the ground by the smaller finches and titmice and others.  One day this week we discovered the mystery of the suet blocks as we watched a crow jump high off the ground and hover beside the block.  It took several attempts, but the crow was successful at knocking off a chunk or two and falling back to ground to enjoy it.  Always trying to win the battle, we attached a shiney aluminum disposable pan to the bottom of the suet feeder today in an attempt to make the crow's efforts more complicated.  Still waiting to see whether or not that is successful.

My favorite forest story is the most personal for me.  A few days ago I was watering a potted plant on the back patio.  Suddenly, I hear the sound of bird wings fluttering and getting very close to my head.  Just as I started to raise up to see what kind of bird was so close to me the bird stopped its flapping and landed square on my head!  I froze in place as the still unidentified bird hopped around my head yanking my shortish blond hair as hard as it could.  I wanted someone else to see this amazing thing so I slowly walked toward the workshop window to alert Bill to the happening.  The bird continued its yanking until I raised my arm to knock on the window. It then flew up a few feet, made another attempt at landing and flew off.  Only then did I see the bird was a titmouse.  My Virginia bird book was quickly thumbed through to find this bird has a reputation for yanking fur out of sleeping dogs and squirrels to use in nest building.  I never thought I looked like either of those things, but one friend said the bird thought my hair looked like a haystack.  She might be right.

Luxembourg Twilight

Luxembourg Twilight by Gerri Young, 2011

In the last year before we left Europe, Bill and I went to the beautiful city of Luxembourg which was just a couple of hours from where we lived in Germany.  I liked the place so much I wish I had explored it earlier and been able to go back numerous times.

As we strolled the old city near twilight, we turned the corner to this enchanted scene where a street light had come on and bathed the narrow way with golden light.  The photos we took stayed on my list of things I wanted to paint for quite some time before I met Robin Poteet, a wonderful watercolor artist in Roanoke, who gave me the courage and guidance to capture this beautiful atmosphere.  I showed the finished painting to a nice Luxembourger lady in Blacksburg who said she felt "transported" by it.  So do I.  Every time I look at the painting now, I get to go to the city again.

A walk in the woods



I know she named this one, but in my concentration to get
 a picture and not fall off the rock at the same time, it
totally escaped me. I now know it is a Canadian Columbine.

 It's one thing to stroll through the woods by yourself. It is quite another to do it with Holly Scoggins, Associate Professor, Department of Horticulture, and Director of the Hahn Horticulture Garden at Virginia Tech.  First she scouts a location for the walk a couple days ahead of time and remembers the location of assorted lovely flowers and plants.  Then she leads a group of early risers through the morning chill and damp and points out treasures like May apples (flashback to my childhood, carefree days in forests), Jack in the Pulpits (familiar, but rarely seen by me), walking ferns (obviously more gifted at walking in the forest) and horsetail reeds, a bundle of which I once had in my possession.  Of note is that she doesn't just say "horsetail reed," she says "Equisetaceae," or things like "Aristolochiaceae" and she somehow wraps her tongue around them before 9 a.m.

In addition to the many interesting flowers and plants Holly pointed us to, she also led us to the Falls Ridge Waterfall which squirmed its way over the rocks, left and right and left again for a total of 80 feet, delivering the always satisfying sound of water in motion and the vision of sunlight dancing on the ripples.  It was not a bad way to start the day.