I can't believe that it is nearly June and I haven't written here since January. A lot under the bridge since then so I'll just take it by the month!

February: I flew to Phoenix and did a workshop with the Art group in Sun City West. We poured the paint and they all had great fun and turned out some really nice work. My friend, Ruth and I then flew to Guadalajara, Mexico to join two other artists for a plein air holiday. I also taught a workshop while I was there. Got some wonderful photos of dancers etc. Check out the gallery under plein air for paintings done on location.

March: The Rockies West National Exhibition hung the month of March at the Art Center in Grand Junction. As President of WCWS and co-chair of the show; I made the award presentations at the reception. The Society is creating a new website which will soon have the images of the 97 paintings in the show on it. Go to www.westerncoloradowcsociety.org to view.

In March, I also had a workshop "Let's Collage" which was a lot of fun. I will be posting my demo from it under new work in the gallery. I have been holding Tuesday weekly classes also and it's been fun having a regular class again. Everyone is painting some fun stuff - I hear moaning when I stretch them out of their comfot level but really see great improvement too.

April brought still cool weather but also pretty tulips, daffodils etc. Lots of trouble getting the paintings from the show shipped back to the artists - 24 different states represented - anyway, it was Fed Ex who gave me fits - talked to about 8 different people at the 800 number before they finally picked up most and the last 8 we gave up and hauled them to the Fed Ex office.

April was busy too as my women's group started a project of taking old chairs and making them pieces of art. The youth of my church has a project to raise money to build a house for an orphanage in Peru. They hope to go the summer of 2011 to work on it. So the chairs will be sold and money donated to their project. I'll put on a few when we get them all ready to go.

May 6, 7 and 8th was my Spring workshop with 9 in attendance. I had 4 staying with me so it was non stop art and talking art with a bit of eating (well, a lot of eating), hot tubbing etc. This workshop we concentrated on portraiture and figures. Everyone surprised themselves in how well they did. The last day was to be using the portrait or figure with flowers and creating an "abstracty" design - not too many achieved that but still were pleased with what they did. My demo will be finished soon and I'll put it in New work in the gallery.

May also took me to St. Mary's hospital for a redo of my hernia repair - it went well as out patient and I am recovering fine. The hospital has a new wing and a beautiful facility - partly because they spent a lot on artwork - Some of which are mine - 2 of my originals and 2 they bought as giclee prints to go in 15 of the rooms.

My grandson, Daniel has been living with me since January but he's heading back to Alaska this coming week. His Mom, Julie has also been here a lot - she had bunion surgery in Feb. also so had to stay off her feet awhile. She and Terry will be returning to Panama the end of June.

Lastly, my two youngest grandkids are graduating high school. Jeff in Houston and Rachel here in Delta. Rachel actually finished in Dec. so has a semester of college behind her already. She will attend Mesa State in Grand Junction next fall. Tell next time, that's all there is! Dani delete