The festival moved to the Pioneer Memorial Park, Mountain View this year. It’s a smaller place than the grounds of the Triton Museum (or so it looked to me), but the park is right next to downtown Mountain View – a place that is more popular than Triton. No, seriously, many people have no idea what the Triton Museum is or even that Santa Clara has an art museum.

Fine Arts League of Cupertino and Campbell Artists’ Guild, to clubs to which I belong, were sharing a lawn at the edge of the park. I was showing with FALC and chatting with CAG friends too – nice!

Kushlani Hall only brought her jewelry; no encaustics, no oils or oil pastels. Her jewelry was gorgeous, of course.

Saw the finished piece that Holly Van Hart was doing at the FALC demo in May. It’s changed a lot, and I still liked it very much. She also had a larger painting similar to that one, and they complimented each other nicely, hanging on the same panel.

Haven’t seen what Donna Orme was doing for almost a year, so it was a special pleasure to stop by her display. I am yet to see a single monoprint of hers that I didn’t like. I can’t even pick a favorite because if I turn my head and look again I’ll change my mind. Her work is that awesome.

Found some great new art that I haven’t seen before: graceful watercolors by Cheryl Kampe and dreamy acrylics by Nance Wheeler.

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.