pixels, light and hot wax

I went and met the lovely Lisa who runs Fremont Jewelry Design in person today, so I can now actually announce that I will be showing there in May. I am really excited about the possibilities of the space, and the potential to show some things that are actually BIG. (Spending all these years showing on 4×6 panels at cons has really skewed my sense of scale.) I will be showing the more abtract flower photography; I’m fairly certain at least one, maybe two pieces from the ones I’ve posted this week will be included.

And if you are going to be in Fremont soonish, the December show of acrylics by Aegae Barclay was still up, and stunning; really engrossing in its layering and color. And there are yummy grinders and gelato just around the corner, too.

• 2 new pieces available for sale: Dandelion Squad and  Nigella Nebula (finally! — both of these first showed up on the blog this summer)
• TusCon has been added to my list of shows for the fall; Natural Woman 2050 will have her first “in the flesh” showing there.
• A number of new conventions have been added to the SF Art Show Convention Calendar

I’ve just got one last print to mat, and I’m off to Foolscap in Redmond to set up my things in the artshow; there are several pieces I haven’t shown to anyone anywhere yet, and some not before seen in meatspace, and I’ll be on the Saturday panel at 10 on The Changing Definition of Art.

I’m daytripping, and also trying to make a technique workshop on this side of the water, so if you want to meet up, either catch me after the panel tomorrow, or call my cell (which is also my business number and hence, on my website)

I’ve taken a small personal project public:

Public Calendar of SF/F/H Conventions with Art Shows or Artist Alleys

It’s pretty Western North America-centric right now (i.e. my mail-in radius but I’m starting to add outside my own range; I hope this will be helpful. If you would like your convention added, just e-mail me the URL for more information (and make sure there is at least a “coming soon!” page for your conventions Art Show or Artist Alley!)

This was inspired by the fabulous calendar that Christy Nicolas (“Green Dragon”) used to maintain for the SFFHs_ArtShows mailing list.

… which was why I was so excited to send some of my work to this very cool new service AnthologyBuilder.com: they let you build your own anthology from their quickly growing archive of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and other short stories, and pick your own cover, too, and deliver it to you in snazzy trade paperback form.  And I just found out this morning that 10 of my pieces have been accepted (I will be sending more, too.)

See my covers on AnthologyBuilder

This is what I alluded to on an earlier post (that would be after the submitting, before the “yes”) and it feels like a bit of redemption of a past mistake. You see, when I was a younger artist, and more prone to thinking I was the exception to the standard rules, I met an art director at Norwescon, who very much liked In My Sights and said if I could make a lot more like that, he could use them on the new imprint they were launching.

So I went home and (yes, I know some of you are shaking your heads disapprovingly out there already) and lost a great deal of sleep creating about 30 covers. On spec. And sent them to said A.D. and heard … nothing. After several months of not being a pushy artist, I sent another polite reminder, and heard nothing.   Some of them, in hindsight, were crap — I don’t normally work that fast and some of them show it.  But many of them weren’t. (No, I’m not saying who it was.)  However, while sometimes the work I intend as a fine art print also looks like something that would make a good book cover, the reverse is not always true. So they’ve just been sitting there, idling, on my hard drive for ages (hence my rediscovery of Natural Woman 2050, which was in the parent folder).  So this feels like a small redemption. (And will feel more like one when people use enough of them on their anthologies that I get a check.

And one more thing. AnthologyBuilder is now running a “match that artwork’ short story contest. If you use one of my works as your inspiration and make the finals, I will give you your choice of any of my limited or open edition prints.

Neptune’s Bouncer, who evolved still yet a bit more from this WIP post, will be having his first real world appearances at Conflunce this coming weekend.

I really like to have at least one brand-new-to-the-world piece for every SF convention I send to (though if I start doing a lot of conventions, I probably won’t be able to keep that up!)

Also, I’ve settled my t-shirt conundrum and will be adding pretty much all the SF designs and also some drawings and photography to my page at RedBubble; I really like both the thriving artist community aspect of RedBubble and the fact that all their shirts are non-sweatshop and made in the U.S. If someone really, really wants an image on a coffee mug or water bottle, e-mail me and I’ll cafepress it for you, but overall maintaining the CP stores is just too much trouble for too little reward.

Also, my captive programmer has rewritten the code underpinning the jeliza.net galleries, so expect to see a lot of new pieces — and new galleries — showing up there soon (but not until next weekend, which will be a data entry festival while the kids are off camping with Auntie and Grandma)

And as long as I’m blogging, if you have little girls that like to play dress-up and live in Seattle, check out the fabulous event “Belle Femme” that Rosemary Wagner is putting on July 26th.

Tonight’s show at Studio Q for the Seattle Ruby Room was great fun — the art looked good, lots of people found great dresses, and a lot of money was raised for a good cause. (And if you missed it, the dresses (but alas, not the art) will also be at the Fremont Sunday Market this coming weekend. And $10 a dress is a heckuva deal. I picked up a couple myself!)

If you are heading to Boskone 44, check out the Mike Ford Auction & Extravanganza. They picked “Throne of Fey” (which is one of my most popular pieces) as the piece of mine they’d like to have for the auction, and it’s the first time it’s been seen on that half of the continent in years (and probably won’t be again for quite some time, as I’ve pretty much stopped doing mail-in sf cons past the continental divide), so if you like it, buy it for a good cause.

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It’s matted to 8×10 in a complementary acid-free lilac mat for easy framing.

Not going to Boskone? Buy any one of my pieces OR commission a new one (via Jeliza.net, jeliza.etsy.com, e-mail, phone) through the end of March and tell me it’s for Dr. Mike, and I will donate 15% of the price to the John M. Ford Memorial Book Endowment.

I will be showing at the Artspawn Open Studio Party, in Woodinville, on the 9th and 10th, from 11 am – 5 pm along with artist-in-residence Lisa Sheets

(collage)

Joe Lee Davidson

(acrylic on canvas)

and Alma Chaney:

(acrylic on canvas)

And I’m really excited about it!

I will primarily be showing work from the Space Whimsy series, but possibly also some of the newer mixed-media body pieces.

Artspawn Studios
13931 Bear Creek Rd
Woodinville, WA 98077
425 881-2192
lisa@artspawn.org

Stop by to share in art, food and conversation. See Artspawn’s new facility!

Orycon starts Thursday, and in addition to my normal art show presence, I will be on several panels and giving a presentation about Fantasy Photography.

My Art Track panel schedule:

Friday, Nov 17:
2 pm: Collecting Science Fiction Art

Saturday, Nov 18:
10 am: Creating your art portfolio
2 pm: Fantasy Photography
This one is my solo gig, full description is:
Fantasy Photography from 1850 to the present
Fairies, Aliens, and Saints, oh my! Explore the Who and the How of Fantasy Photography from its earliest practitioners to now, including a slideshow and how-tos for any tech level.

A few of the artists I’ll be showing and discussing include:
Henry Peach Robinson
Oskar Rejlender
Anne Brigman
Julia Margaret Cameron
William Mortenson
Jerry Uelsmann
Scott Mutter
Suza Scalora
Margaret Dean
Tracy Cornett
John Picacio
Timothy Lantz
…and more!