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Ink drawings by Brett Manning

The Fox's Den. By Brett Manning. Ink

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!

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 media. 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.