Mary Beth Shaw -- StencilGirl and her book

Flavor for Mixed Media: A Feast of Techniques for Texture, Color & Layers, by artist and StencilGirl Mary Beth Shaw, sits on my sagging bookshelf within easy reach.  I haven't kept all of books I've bought on the subject of mixed-media art-making -- and I've skipped buying some of them altogether -- but this one definitely made the cut.  I  never open it without finding new inspiration.

In the "small world" category of things, I recently learned -- soon after deciding to create my own original stencil designs -- that this same Mary Beth Shaw is the artist who created StencilGirl ... http://stencilgirlproducts.com/ 

To my delight, Mary Beth has welcomed me to join the fabulous and creative team of artists behind the stencils already displayed on the StencilGirl website.

As the New Year begins, I'm looking forward to posting images of my StencilGirl designs here on this blog.  They will be available directly from StencilGirl.

Having already purchased StencilGirl products and put them to use, I can happily vouch for their quality.  They are sturdy enough to stand up to the less-than-gentle treatment that my unfortunate art-making tools must endure.

A peace-filled New Year is my wish for everyone out there!  

Pat Dews -- a beautiful soul

I was unable to attend either of the 2012 Pat Dews' wokshops for which I had registered, but that disappointment was followed by Pat's kindly personal invitation to meet her at a recent award ceremony of the New Jersey Watercolor Society, which now -- fortunately for me -- meets in my figurative backyard, at Middletown Arts Center. (If you live in NJ and take NJ Transit from any of the Shore Points to NYC, you ride past this art center every time you pass the Middletown Train Station. These two buildings are rock-throwing distance apart. Not that I'm suggesting you throw any ...!)

My art-world experience was launched in college, in the prehistoric days before popularized computer use, when my major was labeled "commercial art." ("Graphic design," I think, is the modern label.) My focus during that era was representational art. By 1995, however, I had been bitten by a different bug and came down with a full-blown mania for nonobjective abstract art using mixed media. The fever has never gone down.

Thanks to creative minds like Pat Dews', it never will.

http://www.patdews.com