2017 Activities

This was a year of many-some may say scattered- activities.  I stretched myself with art shows, demos, workshops and local exhibitions.  There were commissions too of pets and gardens; one project I'm especially proud of was the "Houston Pet Project". When the first hurricane hit Houston there were many displaced animals, so I put out a Facebook post saying the first 10 people to send me a picture of their pet would get a 5x7 watercolor portrait for $50, donated to the Houston SPCA.  It was a big hit and resulted in $500 sent to help pets.  It was perhaps a small thing but it felt good to help out. It was scary for me as I haven't painted a lot of pets, and never that many at once! However I found out a challenge sometimes makes you move faster and get organized. :)

Dickman's Va Va Bloom Show

Some of the Houston Pet Project portraits

                                Flash Paddle-I did a piece to promote a paddle fest to celebrate Skaneateles Lake. It was used for a poster and T-shirt design. (The paddles in this picture weren't finished yet.) This scene is available at Pixels.com/ChristyLemp as prints, mugs, shirts, etc.

                                                                      Paint Out-our annual John D. Barrow paint out that I help organize in June.  I set up in our local park by the lake and painted this scene.  It was purchased by a local resident. Love knowing when paintings go to a good home!

Another fun thing;  we started a local chapter of Urban Sketchers! I had a retired architect come to our Art Guild meeting to demo how he does travel sketches. He looked up from his drawing and asked if anyone wanted to join him sketching at a local coffee shop sometime.  A bunch of us said YES! and we started meeting monthly in various locations. We started out known as the Syracuse Sketchers, then he applied for us to be a chapter to the national group Urban Sketchers. And that's not all!  A young woman from our area that now works for NBC wanted to do a story on us, so a crew came out to film everybody.  That was SO exciting!  The link below shows the piece.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/this-organization-is-turning-drawing-into-a-social-pastime-1141734979947

So, yes, many activities-didn't even include how many family things went on- and now the first month of 2018 is almost over already.  Time to ferret out the favorite things to do art wise and and maybe get a little more focused. Ya think? Perhaps?!  We'll see!