On with the show! Onyx 9th Annual Fall Show

Fall at my castle means openings: school for The Boy, and a group art show for me!

I'm one of the featured artists in the ninth annual Onyx Fine Arts Collective show! You might remember I exhibited with Onyx at Seattle City Hall in April and May. This show will also be downtown, at the A/NT Gallery (formerly known as the Art/ Not Terminal gallery).

Photos from A/NT Gallery website

The artist reception will be held in the Sub-Terranean ("Sub-T") Room, this wide-open space with an industrial feel, below the entry-level floor.

And best of all, the artists' reception is scheduled for the weekend AFTER the first day of school. So the back-to-school madness will be over, and I'll have had a few hours of rest before the reception. Details:

WHEN: Sunday, September 8th, 2pm-5pm
WHERE: Sub-T Room of the A/NT Gallery, 2045 Westlake Avenue, Seattle
RSVP: Give me something extra to look forward to -- your smiling face! RSVP on my Facebook Page.

The exhibit will be open until September 28th, so if you're downtown, please stop by -- and tag me if you post pictures!

Hello, art collectors!

This is not a story about me: it's a story about my collectors.

Look at the intentness on Susan's face: you can almost see the place in her house where she's imagining she'll display the artist trading card she's holding.

And then Susan and Dick proceeded to browse -- no, collect -- multiple pieces as they worked their way through the pieces I showed at the Mill Creek Art Walk yesterday. Have you ever watched someone fall in love, with a piece of art or with another person?

It's like seeing a whole world of new possibilities dawning in their eyes: unexpectedly intimate and exciting at the same time.

And in my own living room -- oops, I mean the Windermere Living Room. Darren and Gwen Munson truly made me feel at home, and I tried to pass that vibe along to the people who visited.

I think another friend, Marianne Morris, perfectly captured the feeling I'm trying to describe:

There's something about someone loving that thing that you poured your heart into. I don't think I'll ever get used to it. It can turn a complete stranger into a friend in seconds.

A rude awakening

In light of the George Zimmerman trial aftermath, The Boy and I both are rethinking how he looks to other people.

This is The Boy just having fun with a couple of bandannas over his face, a couple of weeks ago. But this morning (sans bandannas) an NPR story got us talking about race.

He asked me if he would have gone to a white school or a black school in the 1960s, since he's biracial. Among other things, I replied that he would have gone to a black school... and I could almost hear the realization of what that probably meant sinking into his mind like a stone.

The Boy is doing very well at school here and now... he goes on field trips, he reads the print off the pages of challenging books... But he knows in the 1960s he probably would have been cut off from most of these educational resources. (I didn't even get into how that hasn't changed for many kids who look like him.)

We did talk about how he still has the power to accomplish anything he wants to do, even though it may take longer than he expects, and that he comes from a long line of people who never give up.

Next stop: The Talk, in which I explain to him that the police are not always his friend. Can it wait until he's at least ten years old?