Back from Art ForMS

I've been back from Canada for a week now, but I've been busy with painting a commissioned work that is for a client's mother-in-law's Mothers' Day gift (hurrah, apostrophes - I'll post the image later - pretty swell little picture, if I may say so); taking my car in for transmission fluid leak repair; working a few hours at the Williams-Sonoma; getting back into the swing of things here...

Anyway, back from Canada, Calgary, where I attended the event, Art ForMS, put together by my friend Mali as part of Team Docktor's (teamdocktor.com/art-forms) MS, fundraising activities. The event was - or perhaps I should say, "is," since this is expected to be the first, annual - an auction, principally a silent auction, but also with several works in a live auction, almost exclusively of art: painting, sculpture, print, jewelry, photography, glass, ceramic, belt, quilt, other... from artists from around Calgary as well as from further afield... like from Austin, Texas. In fact I had a couple other Austin artists' works to keep mine company on the walls, some fine, fine, prints from Chelsea Ward and Michael Sullivan. I'll give Mali official Austinite status, too, since, after all, I know her from school here and she lived here for a goodly while: she had a couple paintings as well as a print-triptych.

All around, the art in the show was pretty high on the quality front, so none of the wall-company was bad.

The place that hosted Art ForMS, DaDe Art and Design Lab, has my nomination for, "coolest place in Calgary." It's located in what appears to once have been a mechanic's shop (it has garage doors) in a historic area of town, Inglewood (really, I guess it's the old, main street of what used to be its own, outlying town); an art, contemporary furnishings, and antique Asian furnishings gallery - easy, laid-back cool. Also got to spend time with the owners, Darcy Lundgren and Greg Fraser - very gracious hosts, swell fellows. Mali is working on the DaDe website, so hopefully there will be some more pictures, particularly of Darcy's artworks, constructions of paper on canvas painted in a Pollock-like manner, soon.

Speaking of more art work soon, here's an interlude of works in progress that I was going to post before I left town - some progress has been made since then on these, but I'll save that for another post.

Also speaking of more artwork soon, I'll have to tell Mali she should put up some of her new paintings on her website.

At any rate, Art ForMS was a great party: lots of folks excited about seeing the art (the folks who bought mine were excited about them, so that's pretty excellent - in fact, I heard that one couple was even more excited about the work they'd acquired after I met them and talked with them about it, so that was tres excellent... since I feared the inverse case...); lots of art to see; all lots sold; successful fundraising; lots of interesting people to visit (good turn out despite cold and rain); wine, food, ginger ale, cheese, jelly, wine... So yeah, you Calgarians who missed out, make sure you don't miss it next year.

In all likelihood, there will be more about my Calgary excursion later, but look at the time!