Diana has been accepted into the juried fine art show and sale “ArtSplendor” aboard the Mega Yacht, “SeaFair” docked in downtown Morehead City, September 29th through October 2nd during the Seafood Festival. Thirty feet of gallery space has been awarded for her pastels. Gallery hours aboard, Friday, 9/30 Noon – 11pm, Saturday, 10/01 10am-11pm and Sun, 10/02 11am-5pm.

Congratulations, Diana!

The Architecture of Place
Works by Christine S. Berndt
Carrboro Town Hall, 301 West Main Street

September 6 – October 27, 2011
Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 5 pm

The opening reception will be part of the 2nd Friday Artwalk in Chapel Hill and Carrboro on Friday, September 9, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm. Please see http://2ndfridayartwalk.com/ for a list of participating venues and maps.

Christine S. Berndt works in pastel and watercolor. She enjoys painting landscapes of the sky, beach, and marsh drawn from her favorite place, Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Her work also explores her interest in historic and modern architecture. She is beginning to experiment with abstractions from nature and buildings. This exhibit provides a selection of these works.

Edited on 9/29/11 to add: There will be a closing reception on Friday, October 14, 2011 from 6pm to 9pm at the Carrboro Town Hall.

This is part 2 of the 2011 IAPS recap by our treasurer, Anne Kiefaber. Read Part 1: The Setting.

The room was quiet except for the scratching of pastel on sanded surfaces or the teacher quietly giving advice to a student. Concentration was high as each student was trying his/her best to become a better landscapist or figure painter. Sometimes one could hear murmurings among certain students as they attained a good point. This was a typical workshop at the convention.

From a learning point of view, the IAPS convention offered an abundance of choices for learning and inspiration. First of all was the quality of the presenters, some of the greats of the pastel world: Maggie Price, Albert Handell, Doug Dawson, Bill Hosner, Alan Flattman, Elizabeth Mowry and Richard McKinley, to name a few.

Workshops in landscape, portraiture and figure were added for the first time this year and I am sure they will be repeated as they were quickly filled.

Richard McKinley gave a two-day workshop, using underpainting in a pastel painting, Clark Mitchell gave one on vibrant skies and water and Desmond O’Hagan gave a workshop on raising the level of one’s pastel painting. Margaret Evans was offering a landscape workshop in the mountains at the end of the convention, which sounded like fun to me. Others like Kim Lordier, offered a one day workshop on painting snow–what a great idea when it was so hot! Margaret Dyer gave a workshop painting the figure.

Luana and I decided to watch demonstrations instead of doing a workshop, so on Friday we chose to see how Claudia Seymour painted her classic still-lifes. Her demo “The Beauty of Light” was quite good. She had set up an elaborate still-life with artichokes, a basket of eggs, a tall pitcher of vinegar as well as a bottle of tabasco sauce and a copper saucepan. A stick of butter was in the saucepan and a set of measuring spoons was hanging overhead to break the line.

She had pre-drawn several steps of her process and would demonstrate her way of setting in the darks first then the brightest local color so she could ‘see’ it.  She was very well prepared and organized and her humorous approach was interesting and fun. I also felt for her because she was set up on a small stage along with her set up, lights, a camera. They had provided screens so if the artist blocked your view, you could still see what she was doing. I was really impressed with this artist and her work is incredible considering she has been doing this for a relatively short time.

Our next demo experience was not so successful. It was Rae Smith’s demonstration on different kinds of mist. The first was early morning mist and the second was evening mist at the beach, but I never made it to the third. This artist does not draw but uses shapes to start her pieces and she did not explain her process but depended on questions to orient her demo. I was surprised since she is the president of the pastel society of America and she teaches as well.

On Saturday, we attended Richard McKinley’s demo which was well organized and fabulous although we both questioned his use of pencil to do his under-drawing.

Finally, our last demo was Duane Wakeham’s talk on the use of color as value and sometimes as shadow. He used a power point of many different award-winning artists to show how they used their color in their paintings. This was very interesting and one thing Luana and I noticed was that most of the winning paintings had primary colors as a dominant color.

Kim Werfel will be displaying her portraits, landscapes and more at the Studio Supply in Chapel Hill for the month of July. Visit with her at the reception this Friday July 8th, 6-9pm during the artwalk at 421 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516

Above is my pastel “Waiting for Mom”, 12″ x 16″, pastel, available framed for $500. Prints will soon be available. A doe gave birth outside my back window during Memorial Day weekend and left this beautiful fawn camouflaged in the leaves. I just had to paint her!

The Town of Cary presents a solo exhibition by PSNC member, Diana L. Coidan, “Pastel Expressions” Above, Below, and Beyond at Cary Town Hall (Academy Street, Cary, NC) on June 24 – August 22, 2011. There will be a reception during the Cary Art Loop on Friday, June 24th from 6-8pm.

Luana Luconi Winner participated in the 18th international juried exhibition at the International Association of Pastel Societies in Albuquerque, NM.  Her painting “Children of Collodi: Gathering” was one of 85 paintings chosen for the exhibition in June 2011.

She will also be participating in the national exhibition Pastels by Invitation 2011 at the Creative Arts Center, Chatham, MA on Cape Cod. Forty-nine national leaders in pastel including Albert Handell, Jimmy Wright, Claudia Seymour, Maggie Price, and others will be exhibited from August 4th – September 2nd, 2011. Each artist will exhibit one piece. Luana’s painting is “Captain’s Table.” www.pastelsbyinvitation.com

Patricia Harriss has a one woman show starting  July 1st, with an artist’s reception from 6-8pm, at the Harnett County Arts Council in Lillington. Around 20 sketches and portraits that she’s made of the residents of Stagecoach Manor over the past 10 years will be on display. See more details on the postcard below.