Well I’m overdue again for some news but better late than never right?  :)

High School Graduation

Let’s see, since my last post here, our basement flooded and our upstairs bathtub drain decided to leak into our kitchen all on the same day!  The basement sump stopped working during a torrent of rain and it only took one hour to flood our entire basement with about one inch of water.  That ordeal set me back about 30-45 days in cleaning up and getting the basement back in order.  Such a pain in the butt.  The icing on the cake was the fact that after my first art show back in April I brought all my paintings to the house and put them in the basement… Yes, the basement.

Fortunately I had them wrapped in plastic wrap with bubble corners on all of them so nothing got wet.  Anyways, after a lot of wall painting, new carpet and a new sump everything is back in order.  Then we tackled the upstairs leak and decided to gut the bath and remodel.  Add another 30-45 days of tear out and work and contractors and we have our new bath upstairs.

The next big deal was the decision to move out of my downtown studio and setup the garage so that I can paint from home.  With the kids being older going back to a home studio makes more sense.  Before I could consider that, we had to get a shed built to make room for an art studio in the garage.  Thanks to Jenny; who deftly handled that all by herself, it got done in between two weeks of almost daily rain.  It saves some money and gives me enough privacy to work yet be close to my kids.    Speaking of which, my oldest son Ed is leaving us for college in about 40 days and it bums me out a bit that he is going to be gone.  :(

I’ll adjust but it will take some getting used too.  Ed graduated last May and now my boy has become a fine young man, who must figure out his own life and destiny, without me hovering over.  We will always be there for him, but we are both entering a new stage in life.  Thinking about an empty nest has been on my mind a lot lately, even though I have two younger children still at home.  It’s weird how quiet the house has been on days when they are all out socializing and visiting friends or swimming.  They are all pretty active and I already miss them.

Anyways, lots of new painting projects going on.  I have a big car piece I’ve just finished drawing out, two new little paintings to bring to the Sugar Creek Art Festival this coming weekend.  Booth N27 if you care to stop in to look.  Three commissions I am starting on: Gayle’s glass piece, Dr. Dave’s piece and Daniel’s book cover.  I also plan on going back to a glass piece I started before the floods, and yes that shelved Raven painting to see if I can salvage it.  If only the garage would clean and organize itself so I can feel like I’m working in a functional studio.

See you after Sugar Creek!