Beauty in Many Forms

Hello, Everyone!  A number of you were able to be part of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston's free bus trip to the museum last Saturday, and by all accounts, it was fun.

We've had a few of last fall's show winners bring their paintings to the library but there's still room for more, so I encourage you to bring in your work for the month of February.

It's Black History Month, and we're featuring a number of books of paintings, sculptures, quilts, and other media created by African Americans. We also have a collection of cookbooks and books on other topics.

And finally, as you grieve the loss of thousands of beautiful Texas trees (Tomball looks like we've started a cottage logging industry) and contemplate another summer of drought ahead, we're hoping to help you save all that natural beauty around your home. Barry Ward, the executive director of Trees for Houston, a non-profit organization dedicated to planting, protecting, and promoting trees, will be here at the library giving advice and wisdom about how to keep your trees healthy in the seasons ahead. His Save Your Trees presentation will happen on Tuesday, March 10th at 10 a.m. in Room L-129. No registration is required and as always at the library, the presentation is free.

Tomball Art League Show Winners to Exhibit in Library

February is almost here, and February is your month on the exhibition walls of the library meeting room!  Those of you who won or placed in the fall 2011 show and exhibition, this is your chance to show off your winning pieces.

Please bring your artwork in Friday, January 27 or Saturday, January 28th. If you go to the Customer Service desk someone will find me. If Room L-129 is vacant at that time we'll hang it immediately; otherwise I'll store it in our workroom until it can be hung.

Please put your name and contact information on the back of the painting. The County prohibits commercial transactions on the premises so you cannot display a sale price on your piece. Interested parties can get in touch with you off site from your contact information.

The image I've selected is a winner that hung at the library from the Spring 2011 exhibition, by Marilyn Henagin.

You're invited!

Let me invite you on a bus trip to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. As part of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston's "A Passion for Glass" traveling exhibit (which is at the Tomball Library only til January 30, by the way) the museum is offering a free bus trip to the museum on Saturday, February 4. I'll be going as the library's host. It will leave the library parking lot at 9:30 a.m. and arrive at the museum about 10:30. Sarah Wheeler, coordinator of the museum's special events, will meet us there and give us a short tour to orient everyone to the museum. Then we're on our own.

Your admission to all the regular museum exhibits is free. You can tour any of the exhibits, take a sketchbook and draw your own art treasure, or purchase tickets to the special King Tut exhibit (either online or at the door) and see it. Lunch will be on each person--bring a picnic and eat it outside in the sculpture garden, or eat at the museum's cafeteria.

The bus to return us to Tomball will leave at 1:30 p.m. and return us to the library between 2:30 and 3:00 pm.

The only thing you have to do is reserve a seat. I will take reservations at the Tomball Art League on Saturday, January 14, or you can phone the library at 832-559-4213 or drop by the reference desk. The bus holds fifty-five and the tour is open to everyone, so get your seat reserved early!

Here's the museum's website so you can have a look at their exciting offerings.

Children's Art Explorers program at the library

For those of you who have artistic young children or grandchildren, please allow me a plug for our Tomball Library's Children's Department's monthly Art Explorers program.

This month at Art Explorers, we will take common household 'collectibles'--metal coat hangers and hosiery--and turn them into works of sculptural art!    Your child will learn about the history of modern/contemporary art and then twist a hanger into a free form design, stretch a nylon hose over it and paint it!  This program will meet on Tuesday, November 8th at 4:30 pm and Monday, November 14th at 1:00 pm in the Children's Department.  Each session is limited to 20 children (2nd to 6th grade) so you'll need to register about a week in advance.  Call 832-559-4235.

Marketing Your Art

Everyone tells us that if we want to sell our art we have to get out there and market it. Most artists I know would rather clean bathrooms than market themselves. Others of us, however, are doing an extraordinary job of it. I happened to bump into a YouTube video of just such an artist, a man with an amazing imagination for marketing. 

Matt LeBlanc is an abstract artist from Dieppe, New Brunswick, Canada. He has a background in advertising and talent and imagination for using social networking--Facebook and Twitter--for marketing himself.

He has made several YouTube videos but this one he made especially to compete for an Excellence Award in Marketing offered by the Moncton, NB Chamber of Commerce.

Here's the link to his video.

And here's his website!

And of course, the library has art marketing books for you. Here are a couple of our more recently published ones:

How to Make Money as an Artist: The 7 Winning Strategies of Successful Fine Artists by Sean Moor

Selling Art without Galleries: Toward Making a Living from your Art by Daniel Grant

Leaving an Artistic Mark on Her City

Diana Kersey is a potter in San Antonio who, in 2009, was awarded a Public Art Commission in the City of San Antonio to design, build, and install ceramic panels for the Mulberry Avenue and Millrace Bridges as part of a drainage project at Brackenridge Park.

The city wanted her to depict the health of waterways. When the public were consulted about the Mulberry Bridge, they wanted a landmark, something distinctive. Diana took both those requests, linked water health with the health of amphibians, chose the local Gulf Coast Toad, and created 24 hand-crafted ceramic panels — most of them 2 feet by 6 feet, about 208 square feet of fired clay in all — on both sides of the bridge's two guardrails, telling the toad's life story.

Image above: Diana Kersey drew from the connections among the bridge, water and animal life for her first public art project, the Mulberry Avenue Bridge. STEVE BENNETT / EXPRESS-NEWS

See images of this project.

Read Steve Bennett's article in the San Antonio Express from June 23, 2011.

Installation Art at Rice University

Houston’s famous Rice University has an extensive art department and an art gallery as well. The gallery is "The only university art museum in the nation dedicated to site-specific installation art[.] Rice Gallery presents temporary, large-scale environments that visitors can enter and explore. Artists typically use inexpensive materials to create stunning works of art."

The next exhibition, by Mexican-American Ana Serrano, will open on September 29th. You are invited. The opening is free (parking, however is not!); it's from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, September 29th, and the artist will be there to give a talk and mingle with visitors. The gallery is located at 6100 Main Street, in 352 Sewall Hall. Here's a phone number: 713-348-6069.

Ana Serrano "Notices the parts of the urban landscape that most of us ignore...She creates small sculptures of buildings that cull together what might catch her eye on a morning walk: the hand-painted signage and illustrations on a local business, the blue and turquoise colors of a house with the cord of a satellite dish snaking down the side, or an auto parts shop adjoining a pink and yellow piñata store.

In Salon of Beauty, Ana Serrano will enlarge these details in a cityscape of buildings that playfully mix together her observations of the unexpected and ephemeral nature of a city constantly being made and unmade by its residents." 

See more of her work at http://www.ricegallery.org/new/exhibition/serrano.html