The third weekend was the quietest out of all three. There were almost no visitors, very few people even walked by. Maybe it was the heat, maybe something more interesting was going on in the neighborhood, maybe we didn’t do enough to promote the event.

Slava and me were showing at the Great American Framing. Marsha Sims, Kathy Sartain, Cathy Zander from the 1st SVOS weekend at Community School of Music and Arts were here again, and I met other artists that I don’t remember seeing before: Lei Min and Linda Salter.

Lei’s oils are beautiful and energetic. She used to do commission portraits and showed me an prospect from her solo exhibit with awesome portraits of Taiwan, Philippine, and Malaysia prominent figures and of their family members.

Linda Salter paints and draws many different subjects: great portraits, still life, figure drawings, landscapes. She seems to work in every medium available – oil, watercolor, graphite pencil, pastel, ink – and always experimenting. She was doing nice small ink drawings while in the gallery. Made me want to pick up my ink and brushes again.

We still had some guests, some good conversations with them and with each other, and I saw the local University Arts store for the first time. To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. It’s huge, it’s full of great stuff, and what I can’t or won’t use myself is still fascinating to look at. I am not going to their San Jose store, ever.

Got my horse photos, thanks Irina!

This time the weather was certainly better then during the last weekend – not too hot, not too cold, with a nice breeze. Both Slava and me were showing in the backyard of the Nina Uppaluru’s house. Iona Ezaki, Janki Chokshi, and Rajiv Khilnani kept us company.

Don’t think I saw Rajiv’s abstracts on paper before – they are awesome. He also brought my favorite acrylic one, and the big acrylic that he had on the easel next to his booth was pretty good too. The fact that acrylics can be put in direct sun and still survive makes me slightly envious. I kept my pieces in the shade at all times.

Nina said the first visitor came at 7:30 am in the morning, and there were more early visitors while we still were setting up. Nina’s gorgeous Japanese Shiba (I keep forgetting her name) was in dog heaven, enjoying attention from new people and closely following some of those who seemed to be interested in art more than in her.

Two nice horse ladies brought good news that the racecourse in Pleasanton is to become a replacement for now defunct Bay Meadows. I suppose they are going to improve it and make the season longer than current 20 racing days or so during the Alameda County Fair. Exciting! Would be even better if a harness racing track materialized nearby, but chances of that happening are nill. I will gladly take Thoroughbred races as the next best thing.

Another very nice lady offered to send me horse photos as a reference for my work, free of charge. She showed them to me on her camera – head shots of pretty sport horses from Mozhaisk, Russia. Yay!

This weekend was the first time that Slava and me participated in SVOS as artists. Slava was at the Great American Framing Co & Gallery in Palo Alto (why or why don’t they have a website?), and I was at the courtyard of the Community School of Music and Arts along with Kathy Sartain, Marsha Sims, Cathy Zander, Kushlani Hall, and others. Apparently, Kushlani is in KALEID too – need to find her display there next time I go change my artworks.

When we were getting familiar with the place a couple of weeks ago, Kathy Zander said that Mother Nature always knows when there is going to be an art show and turns the wind on. It was very windy then, but this weekend Mother Nature decided to be creative and added rain to it. We were setting up under the drizzle and occasional big drops, with a wind gust here and there. Nothing too bad, but not exactly a weather that makes people want to go outside to see some art.

Still, we had quite a few guests, some with kids who were going to or from CSMA classes. Many of those kids love horses (yes, they are girls mostly, but there were two boys too). Kushlani’s daughter is a horse person herself, and she and her brother draw. Lucky Kushlani. My kids don’t touch art stuff at all.

Kids are hilarious. Watching them and just enjoying it was one of the best parts of the show. One boy was shouting today after all wondering around the courtyard, “What? Are we leaving already?!!” Another one discussed drawing horses with me – I think he was about 8 or 9. Very serious, no smiles.

I finally got to see what Kathy Sartain does – it’s glass mosaics, very beautiful. Marsha Sims’ photographs are great, especially the double rainbow and the rock sliding in your face (well, it gives that feeling that it keeps sliding towards you because of the tracks behind and the angle of the shot – absolutely awesome).

Kushlani painted her daughter from a photo today – a light figure walking into the darkness. She didn’t have time to finish it of course, but I really liked how it was turning out. And she had some kid for a company half of the time. She is doing oil, oil pastel, encaustic art, pretty jewelry, and she’s pretty good at all of it.

All I mastered when there were no visitors in the booth or around was 1.5 sketches. I can’t draw and converse at the same time.

Silicon Valley Open Studios come early this year! Stop by to see my new art at the following sites during the first three weekends of May, 2009:

May 2 – 3, Site 140:
Community School of Music and Arts
230 San Antonio Circle, Mountain View, CA 94040-1276

May 9 – 10, Site 179:
Columbus Group
21471 Columbus Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014-4972

May 16 – 17, Site 61:
Great American Framing
229 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301

You can find maps for all these locations on the SVOS website.

We had just one more day to see the rest of open studios, so we started it by planning the route. That took some time because less sites were still open on the third weekend, and they were scattered all over the valley. We did make it to many more sites than yesterday, so I will be brief.

Margaret Prendergast Washington was the first artist we visited. Her watercolors are like fine China – light, elegant, and very pleasing to the eye.

A lot of interesting artists were showing in the Alameda Galleries – a labyrinth of studios behind the Recycle Book Store with a very unassuming entrance.

The artwork that caught my attention first was four pieces of burl with colorful pictures on them done with some dry media that I could not identify. It had no information next to it, but I was assured that the artist herself is about to arrive soon and I could ask her. We did not get to talk to the artist, but her husband was kind enough to explain that it was pastel on burl and that it’s a lot of work to complete such a large piece. I would imagine it was, but the result looked fabulous. The name of the artist was Patti Linder-Dodd, and her business card said she specializes a murals.

Nancy Walters shoots and paints wild animals. The portrait we saw go beyond capturing likeliness, they convey personality. Nancy must feel strong connection with her animals.

I am not sure how David Lippenberger’s art should be classified or if it even needs to be put into any specific category. He had many unusual pieces in his studio of which one with black wooden shapes for a city and rope-clad skies was the best. There was something about earthy tones of the rope playing against ominous black mass beneath that captivates the eye.

On the wall of the passage next to David’s studio were several abstract painting of Simone Raoux, a wonderful sequence of gorgeous pieces rich with texture and radiantly warm colors. In her studio, there was more wonders to see, all very different, each of them with its own emotion. Somehow they did not clash with each other; despite their differences, they formed an intricate harmony on the walls. I don’t remember being that immersed in abstract art since I first saw paintings by Karen Hale years ago.

There were more artists in the Alameda Galleries, but we wanted to see other sites too so had to leave.

Douglas Vincent’s Ilfochrome photos of nature seemed to glow from the inside and have almost a three-dimensional feel to them. He’s obviously a very talented photographer who does not need to rely on an unusual technique or materials, but they certainly add a special touch to his art.

We barely entered Amy Brown’s yard when I was stopped by beautiful ceramic fish on the fence. The whole yard was full of birds, fish, shark head vases and so much more that I was not sure where to look first. Amy had to invite us into the house more than once, and I finally followed with a small pelican in my hands. I am partial to ceramics, what can I say. She paints her tropical scenery, flowers, and frogs in acrylic, but the result looks like oil. There was a triptych of Red Eyed Tree Frogs above the fireplace that to me was the best thing in the whole room, I am not even a frog person.

Noreen Christopher and Jeanette Turkus were showing at the site that had a funny contrast between very good lighting and wooden floors generously spattered with paint of all colors imaginable. I liked Noreen’s abstract acrylics and Jeanette’s figurative art most of all, but the whole exhibit by those two artists was very strong.

Judging by the imagery outside, I expected to see a cat or two in Joe Decker’s house, but we saw none. His breathtaking photos were hanging, laying, and standing everywhere, and Joe could tell a story about each and every one of them down to the exact name of the place and a year when the shot was taken – what I would give to have that kind of memory!

Janet Trenchard works in many different media, and her display reflected that. She creates unusual mixed media assemblages, paints in acrylics, and does some sort of printmaking that I never saw before. Unfortunately, the name of the technique escaped my mind as soon as we left the site, but it had a delicately weathered look to it. Janet said that because it is not an easy technique, very few artists are engaged into it.

By that time studios started to close down, and we decided to call it a day. And it was a very good day, I might add.

Until this year, I was rather skeptical about the event. Slava and me were to a few open studios here and there before, and were not impressed. But this time it was different, we now knew some of the participating artists through the Campbell Artists’ Guild and the Fine Arts League of Cupertino, really liked their work, and wanted to see more of it. So of we went, without any planning. The goal was to visit our friends first and then see how much time we had left to explore the rest.

For some reason I was sure that it’s the second weekend, and at first the information in the SVOS directory seemed to agree. We stopped by Nina Uppaluru’s house to say “hi” to her and other members of the Fine Arts League of Cupertino who were also showing there: Belinda Lima, Raja Guha Thakurta, Iona Ezaki, Jane Ferguson, and William Galarneau. It was a pleasure to see so many artworks in different styles and mediums. I had no idea Iona was also making jewelry. She had some nice items, one pair of earrings was so beautiful that I could not help myself and bought it.

Our next stop was at the studio of Joy Kuo, also a member of Fine Arts League of Cupertino. Our arrival was marked by some shrill cries, and at first we couldn’t figure out who was making them. Then we saw a couple of peacocks – a male lying on the ground under the tree and a female on the branch above our heads. Joy said that in India people prefer peacocks to dogs for guarding their houses, and we could see why. They would not let anyone pass by the house unnoticed. Yao-Pi Hsu and Lucy Marcoux were also showing there, both in the nice gallery upstairs and in the yard. There were not many other visitors which was a pity – they were mission on a great mix of photography, Chinese and traditional paintings.

From there we went to to see Jill Johnson from the Campbell Artists’ Guild only to find no signs of an open studios anywhere. That’s when finally looked at the dates closely and found out we’re on the third weekend and not on the second one. Sadly, we missed Jill.

We also made some wonderful discoveries today.

Jake Snyder. He paints incredible landscapes and cosmoscapes (I just love this word, think he invented it!) being color blind, and he is also a talented sculptor. There were also a few drawings done with a very fine Rapidograph on a watercolor paper and a wood carving of the horse head with carnivorous teeth that I liked the most. Can’t remember what it was called – “When horses were predators” or something like that – it reminded me of Kelpie, Each Uisge, and the likes. I could not move away from him, it was such a fascinating work!

Suzan Siltaniemi. Wonderful portraits, scenery, and a wide range of other subjects. Her photos of historical San Jose neighborhood are especially charming.