White House Blue Room Ornament December 2008
I have a fun story I had to wait till today to tell anyone per a
contract I signed.
The serendipity is that if I had never had the faith to join this
guild, put the time into the gallery, put the personal time into
getting to know an incredible congressman, or brought my artwork to
work on outdoors - this chance would have never come my way. The
store and the links to it follow below.
It all started with a guild I joined here where I live called GCRAG
(GCRAG.org if your curious) Well one of our new members who is also
the former mayor of Castle Rock offered his office walls and
conference rooms for a gallery. So we scraped wallpaper, tore off
trim, repainted, re-trimmed - and when it was all done hung a glorious
collection of artwork from 26 of our members. One of the obligations
to being in the gallery is to man the receptions desk on Fridays and
Saturdays - so we split it into shifts and took turns. One of the
appealing ideas to draw people into the gallery was to demo our work.
So I brought a lovely photo of an iris a friend took and started
drawing it on my paper canvas. I would sit in the beautiful sun and
listen to birds while enjoying the quiet that comes from my sons being
at home with dad for a couple hours.
In that office works a wonderful woman named Ellen - she's a
congressman for Tom Tancredo (who is stepping down this term). I
would stop by her office to chat about her beautiful grandaughter, and
about all the opportunities she's been able to give high school
students in Colorado to have the chance to show their artwork at the
White house every year. She's a terrific woman!
A call came out to find an artist last minute to paint an ornament
that would hang in the Blue Room this Christmas (2008) and she thought
of me and my iris and gave me a call. I gladly took on the project
(although the honor of that call is still sinking in as I type this).
When I went to drop of the ornament she whisked me off to Tom
Tancredo's office and took pictures of us with the ornament (I'll post
those later) and we sent the ornament Fed Ex. The pictures are in an
album linked here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/
The unveiling of the white house theme is at this link, and just as
Laura Bush walks up to the tree the camera catches a glimpse of my
ornament as it pans across, and then again when it pans up, and then a
closer shot that just glances when it pans onto their faces just
before they start to look at the rest of that amazing tree. 369 hand painted ornaments from each states district that participated are on that tree. See the interview and the beauty of how
they've decorated here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/
I'm not sure where this will lead - I just know I'm going to keep
painting and drawing. I just recall when I joined this group how
terrified I was to draw - now I draw for the love of it! I wouldn't
be at this point in my life if it weren't for Aritst Way and my desire to be an artist!!
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