Sandi Whetzel exhibits at the Umpqua Valley Wine, Art & Music Festival, Sept. 12 & 13, 2009

Wine on the Vine ©Sandi Whetzel

Amid the flurry of putting the last touches on paintings, addressing postcard invitations, assembling greeting cards of my art, designing a booth space with a new metal rack system, restoring files from a computer crash last week, and other details, I am looking forward to setting up my booth at the Umpqua Valley Wine, Art and Music Festival, Sept. 12 & 13, 2009 at Umpqua Community College's Amphitheatre, Winchester, OR. This is a brand new beautiful venue for the wine festival on its 40th anniversary; the oldest continuous running wine festival in Oregon. The festival location is ideal with easy access off I-5 at exit 129.

The event is the place to be for family friendly entertainment and games, a car show and fire engine display, dozens of regional artists, local wineries and food vendors and first class live entertainment. Some of the music will be Volifonix, Paul Biondi and the Michael Tracey Band and the Colin Ross Band. For a schedule of the entertainment and activities click here
The festival hours are Saturday from 11 am - 10 pm and Sunday from 11 am - 6 pm. Tickets to the event are available at the gate or online, here

The image I am using for my postcard invitations to the event, (pictured with this post), is of my painting, Wine on the Vine, which was the first of my series of wine paintings. This painting was selected to promote this same wine festival in 2005 and also the Wine About Art Exhibit at Umpqua Valley Arts Association in 2004. I just couldn't resist the opportunity to connect the painting with this event again this year via my postcard invitations and with this post.

I will be featuring a hand embellished high quality giclee reproduction on canvas of theWine on the Vine painting in my festival booth. Other paintings in the wine series and framed giclees of Wine on the Vine and Wine on the Vine II will be displayed, as well as most of my succulent series and other paintings. The space will be brimming with bold, lively color.

Sandi Whetzel's Exhibit at the Umpqua Valley Arts Association Summer Arts Festival was a Hit!

I had vowed never again to display my art at the local art festival. It was just too much work without a booth buddy to share the responsibility. But when the members of Umqua River Gallery Dot COM decided to display as a group at the Roseburg Umpqua Valley Arts Festival, I decided to get on the band wagon. And I am glad I did. The whole thing took place this last weekend, June 27th-29th in a big way.

Umpqua River Gallery dot COM is comprised of 14 local artists of Douglas County who are represented in an online virtual gallery. Besides the shows the individual artists enter and their studio spaces at their homes, the online gallery is home to their art at www.UmpquaRiverGallery.com . John Galvin, photographer artist and his wife, Linda, business manager and website developer, are the driving force behind the organization.

Any way, back to the art festival. Our group of artists secured the Gallery East inside the arts center building and nine of the artists' works were represented. It was quite a challenge to get that many artists' works displayed adequately in one room while maintaining good visibility for all and optimal traffic flow through the exhibit. It turned out rather well. Even though it was a very hot three-day weekend without air conditioning, we had a lot of people visit our displays.

I got to meet lots of interesting people, pass out business cards pointing to my blog and postcards describing my upcoming exhibit at the Hult Center, July 18-August 23, 2008. (See my earlier post about the Hult Center Exhibit.) But the most exciting news is I sold a phenomenal amount of art, greeting card art, art magnets, and high quality giclee reproductions of my work. One of my previous art collectors increased their collection of my work from four to now six pieces. I gained another collector who purchased not one, but two pieces of art. I do love my art collectors! And it was fun to hear everybody's reactions to my art. It was a very good weekend.

Wine on the Vine: Painting to Fit an Imposed Theme--A Journey of Self-Discovery

Wine on the Vine Giclee on canvas or paper
Originally uploaded by sandiwhetzel

This painting was my answer to a challenge to create a painting to illustrate the theme, "Wine on the Vine". The Umpqua Valley chapter of the Oregon Wine Growers was seeking original artwork to promote the 34th Annual "Greatest of the Grape" event held at Seven Feathers Convention Center, in Canyonville, OR. I wanted to compose a painting that would convey "Wine on the Vine" differently than any other artist might do.

I started playing with the placement of wine bottles in thumbnail sketches, with the idea that I just might do a painting of abstract wine bottles. Then I started playing with adding grapevines and finally gravitated to the idea of the bottles growing on the vines with grapes inside the bottles. Then I got excited about that concept and I painted it in acrylics on canvas, adding texture which resembled craters in the moon and the moonlight radiating outwards in the sky. I feel like it does truly say "Wine on the Vine".

But more importantly, it really opened me up to my own creativity; forcing me to expolore how I could imagine and invent subject matter for a painting from nothing other than what I might conjure up from my own imagination. I'd never done that before. I''d always been inspired by something that I'd actually physically seen which became the catalyst for a painting. Allowing myself to work within the confines of an imposed theme opened the door to my creativity and gave me a great satisfaction.

Though not commissioned for that event, the painting was used to promote two other wine-themed events in Roseburg, OR. A reproduction of the painting was the promotion piece for the "Art About Wine" Exhibit in the Hallie Brown Ford Gallery at the Umpqua Valley Arts Center in 2004 and the Umpqua Valley Wine and Art Festival in 2005. The cover of Currents: The News-Review's Guide to Arts, Entertainment and Television, July 15, 2005, Roseburg, OR, featured the painting and I was interviewed regarding my painting. The painting is also featured in a book, Northwest Artists: A Collection of Works by Notable Artists of the Northwest, released May 16, 2005, ISBN 0-97600170-5. The original acrylic painting was sold prior to those events during the Umpqua Valley Arts Summer Arts Festival in 2005.

During that art festival a mature gentleman seemed genuinely interested in this painting. He collected original art only and told me the painting spoke to his heart. He was going to need a few weeks to come up with the $900 to purchase it and I didn't think to offer him the option of putting down a cash deposit to hold it for him. Later a very young man expressed interest in the painting also. It was to be his first major art purchase. He told me that right after he first looked at it he bought a glass of wine and sat at a table accross from my art booth; just sitting there thinking about how much he'd like to buy it and how he would probably have to live on Ramen noodles for three months if he decided to buy it. He finally took the plunge and paid for it in several monthly installments. I was so endeared by his falling in love with the painting and having to own it. It was my first personal major sale apart from the gallery experience where the artist usually has no personal contact with the buyer. I was so impressed that someone so young was willing to make financial sacrifices to purchase something I had created from my imagination.

I got such wonderful feedback on this surrealistic painting. I've sold a few high quality giclee reproductions of it on canvas. One was auctioned off at the Palate to Palette fund raiser for Umpqua Valley Arts Association. High quality giclee reproductions in limited editions are available on canvas or archival paper upon request and greeting cards of it also. Later I used the same composition of the painting to compose the second in a series of "Wine on the Vine" paintings. The overall color is red-orange in that one, which created a completely different feeling and energy in the painting. I'll be posting "Wine on the Vine II" in another post later.