Marfa Lights

We pulled into Marfa, TX around 5 or 6 pm and most of the galleries were closed and since they didn’t open till noon the next day and us being gone around 9am it just didn’t work out for us to do any gallery hopping. We did try at a few places but for some reason the artists and owners didn’t really want to have anything to do with outsiders, which is alright with us, they just missed out meeting the most famous artist that has ever come though there (not valid in most states).

So we went out to the viewing platform to wait for darkness in hopes of seeing the even more famous “The Mysterious Marfa Lights”. With a few hours of day light left Hannah velcroed a few things down and I drew.



this is where I work

As the night came so did the people, but we were parked down on the end cuz we know we were going to spend the night and wanted to be outta the way. Once the sun went down we started seeing lights up in the hills but quickly determined that they were too constant and uneventful to be the Marfa Lights and were house and car lights. We stared off into the distance for about 2 hours or so enjoying $2 wine we picked up at Wal-mart and ate chips for dinner.

Then outta the corner of my eye I see a red yellow light wiggling around, I excitedly tell Hannah and she leans over just in time for a green light to catch our eyes with a wiggly line and a dot motion which leads into a 3 dash line. This thing makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. We sit there for another hour or so trying to figure out what the hell that was. No car was able to get their lights out there like that and had it been a car wouldn’t we be seeing it every time a car passed? We also figured if some yahoo with a laser pointer was doing it wouldn’t we have seen it more? Then out in front of us we see 3 or 4 big patches of light blue lights light up in a row one right after another. Then again a little closer and over a bit 2 or 3 doing the same thing. This time I was looking right at them, I think Hannah only saw the 2nd set cuz she was Facebooking and Tweeting about just seeing a shooting star.

sunset

Its was a nice cool night which made “Boondocking” very easy, however most of my night was spent staring out the window at the spot we saw lights. When morning came we had our coffee and enjoyed the sunrise. Then we hit the road.

sunrise

Just out side Valentine, TX we came up to Prada Marfa, which a couple on their way to LA told us they were looking for the day before in Marfa when we both stood in front of a closed gallery. Then we had a good breakfast of bacon and eggs at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere……. On to Cloudcroft…..

I should have been a model

RV Living

Well, since about January or February you poor folks have had to put up with hearing about us getting an RV and hitting the road. Well folks, today we welcome our newest employee to the Art By Nemo family. She’s a big midnight blue, 24 foot, 8000 pound sprinter we are going to call “Nautilus”.

We are spending our 1st night at an RV park just south of Austin and testing out everything, seems simple enough, just need to go though everything once or twice and we should have it down.

It’s been one hell of a long wait and somewhat a bit of a headache but here we are living in a van…..down by the river…..

Donating Art Rant

This past week has really opened my eyes to the way people think. I am asked almost on a daily basis to donate art to something or other. Most of the time I have no idea what the cause is and sometimes I don’t even care about the cause, but I unselfishly hand over hundreds of dollars worth of product without ever wanting or asking for anything in return.

Its tax deducible they say. BS, you have to donate more than $10K for it to even matter come tax time. You get a free ticket to enjoy the event, however you have to buy another ticket to take your wife. This one is even more BS. The worst part is when you show up and there’s a cash bar. "It will get you lots of exposure", Ha ha ha! I laugh at this one. I have been donating art for a long time and never once has anyone done anything for me to get me exposure. They always use someone else’s piece on the invites or websites, most of the time they spell my name wrong, I have even been left out on everything too. They e-mail and call you every day and pretend to be your best friend then once they get your piece they are no where to be found. I can go on and on and on but you know what I’m talking about.

On to what opened my eyes. I had to bring drinks for the show at Art SA, not much, just a case as kinda my fee to do the show. Well I asked everyone I could think of for a donation of beer or wine. I knew a guy that worked at a big beer place and we went back and forth real well right up to the point when I had to pick it up, then nothing. I asked a huge wine guy on twitter, no responses, even though I saw him talking to other people at the same time (I unfollowed him after this blog). I had a show at a brewery once before leaving to Colorado and the whole place seemed to love us and I would e-mail with the owner a lot, so I asked him too. Guess what? Yup, nothing. I e-mailed and called a few more people before giving up and going to Sams and buying wine.

So I am no longer donating any of my work or any of my time to anyone or anybody. I am so pissed that I couldn’t even get a "no" out of these people and the cheap lame responses I did get didn’t help much. We as artists need to demand more from these people who ask us to donate art. So stand up with me and just say no!

I am still donating to Say Si in San Antonio cuz they are very good to the artists even if they have hundreds and hundreds of them to put up with and keep track of but they do it and do a great job at it. But that’s pretty much it, the rest can suck an egg.

Art SA

front of the gallery

Last night we had another great show at Art SA, I wasn’t blogging then but we have had many great show at Art SA and this one was right up there. Since the bomb of a show in OKC we have been working hard to make things happen here in our hometown. With hard work and lot of luck we were able to sell 3 large paintings that have been hanging in a restaurant for about 3 years. We also picked up several checks from galleries but we felt we needed to have a show. So we called up Darryl at Art SA and asked if he had anything going on. Turns out he had a big show with 4 artists coming up. He had a room in the back of his gallery was wasn’t being used and said it was all ours if we wanted to use it.



front rooms



some of my old pieces



this gallery has all my old stuff

Art SA started out near the San Antonio International Airport in a shutter store and did a bit of jumping around and had a few name changes but ended up in a beautiful 1880’s house in Monte Vista. We were really impressed with how the gallery looked. He bought the house a little after we moved to Denver so we had been looking forward to seeing it in person. 

guess who was in here

my art

There was a pretty good turn out even though it rained most of the day. It did stop right at 6 before the 1st person came though the door. It started off slow but people seemed to find their way back there to see my art. We saw a lot of old friends and co-workers. It always surpises me to hear that people already know about me and my work. We talked about our van and our touring. Everyone seems so jealous about what we are doing and with good reason cuz its going to be great. We ended up selling 5 pieces and a few magnets and we had so much fun and enjoyed a great looking space. If you have a chance to stop in while in San Antonio tell em Nemo sent you and please have a beer for me *wink*.

Already with a few shows under our belt this 1st leg of our tour has been crazy and we haven’t even gotta our tour van and we haven’t even really hit the road that hard. This Friday we will be in Austin picking it up and you folks will be the 1st to see all the pictures.

San Antonio

I know what that tower is, do you?

While meeting up with friends and family we did mange to drive by our old house, which looked like most of the stuff we planted was doing very well. We got a chance to see the Hays Street Bridge, which we own property near, and the main reason why we bought that land it the 1st place. We walked along the new north end of the Riverwalk and parts of downtown.


these fish were cool



I dont know what this is



but this face was in it



Met with all 4 of my gallery owners and walked past a few places I tried to get into or was afraid to ask or even go in. It’s funny how different it is now, I no longer have the hopelessness under water feeling when it comes to galleries or putting on shows. Now when I talk to a gallery owner I feel the tables have turned. There is no more thinking that working with them is the only way to make me money or that they can make me famous. Now I feel like they need me so they can pay their own bills. Being a professional artist is a good feeling.

I had to take my picture in front of the Alamo



saw our favorite bottle wall



in Texas all the cheeses look like this


We also set up a show with Art SA Gallery, hope it does us well, I will blog about it soon.

Van Update - Construction Progress!

Back At The Ranch

Just wanted to share some of the things I have been looking at out here

We drove around in this yesterday

Saw some of these

And some of these

Some critters I saw

And some cool stuff on the fence

And this is a really cool pattern on a log

Animated Gifs Of Koi Commissions

Here are a few pieces I did a few weeks ago that I wanted to share with you. A twitter friend of mine asked if I could make a piece that looked like the landscape pieces I have on my site but with koi fish. I loved the idea so much I made two of them so I could have one, but after she got the 1st piece she wanted the 2nd piece too! So now I need to make another one so I can have one. Hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Back In The Saddle Again

Well, we pulled into Texas around 4pm Tuesday evening. Had a nice spaghetti and wine dinner with Hannah’s dad and step mom, which I like to call my parents away from my parents. It rained most of our trip and one time we went sliding down the street, but it was a good drive.

We are staying at Hannah’s grandma’s house, which is really old and nice, in Comfort, Texas in the hill country. Its been renovated since the last time I’ve been here and it has a nice B & B feeling to it, only we have it all to ourselves and I have to make my own breakfast.

I claimed a corner of the house with the best light to draw. We put paper down to catch my pencil dust and I got right to work and kicked out a new koi drawing.

It finally stopped rain and once it dries up we will go out walking around the ranch to see if we can find any cool stuff to draw out here. We still haven’t made it into San Antonio but this weekend we should have time to run around and see everyone.

here are some of the views we have:

Oklahoma City Arts Festival

This was another one of those shows where we set up on a Friday but the show didn’t start till Saturday. I did hear that last year they started the show on Friday at 3 and went for 4 days. But I’m ok with the 3 day long show and having the extra day to set up. We stayed at a motel about a block away which was cool but parking an RV at the school would have been a lot better.

here is the sea of RVs and vans

Set up was great since we are getting really fast at it. We had a really nice breeze and decided to go grab some sandwiches and drinks and have a picnic in our tent and watch all the other artists set up. It was truly a lazy Sunday afternoon, but on a Friday.

1st day was really slow. Every one seemed to blame football since OU and OSU both had games going on. But there was still a lot of people out and about and I saw more than a few carrying art they had bought so someone was making money. Just not us, we sold a few magnets and a really small left over piece from the bin.

our tent looked good as the sun was going down

2nd day was a little better with the sale of 2 pieces. But the wind was about 15 to 25 mph and was blowing people right outta our tent.

3rd day………. Nothing…… although one of the big tents fell down and it took some people down. Here’s what I found about it online

this is what the tent looked like before

and what it looked like afterwards

Its seem like all the artists I talked to didn’t do so well and a lot of them said hey wouldn’t be back next year. We had about the worst show ever, but Hannah and I agreed that had we had our RV already we could have done more in the city. There is a 1st and 2nd Friday event every month, a few galleries that looked like they needed some “art by nemo” in them and another show next weekend in Norman, Oklahoma. I did talk to a lady about the other shows that happen round year and we might be back to check them out but we might not do this one again.

The Good: The girls were treating me like I had Justin Bieber hair

The Bad: The girls were only 10 and 12 years old

The Ugly: We made no money and the big tent tried to kill some people

Whats next you ask?

Booked

October Art Fest 2010 - Cloudcroft, New Mexico

Georgetown Art in Square 2010 - Georgetown, Texas

ArtFest of Scottsdale 2010 - Scottsdale, Arizona

Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival - Carefree, Arizona

4th Avenue Winter Street Fair - Tuscon, Arizona

Waiting

Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival - Carefree, Arizona

Palm Springs Arts Festival - Palm Springs, California

Southwest Arts Festival - Indio, California

La Quinta Arts Festival (Palm Springs area) 29th Annual

Palm Springs Arts Festival - Presidents Weekend