(Click image to view full size)
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
December 2, 3, and 4, 2022:
“Local Art from Hand & Heart” — I’m looking forward to having a booth at this year’s in-person (face masks required) Iowa City Eastside Artists Show and Sale!
The event is held at the Masonic Building, 312 East College Street in downtown Iowa City. You can find more information at the Eastside Artists website and Facebook page.
(This post is “stickied” to remain at the top of the blog; newer blog posts may appear below.)
Discussing one of
the watercolors
This display includes some little
tapestries I’ve been making.
More about those later!
Thank you to everyone who stopped by the opening event at Iowa Artisans Gallery for the show “Creating for Causes,” featuring my Creating for a Cause artwork and products. The exhibit remains at the gallery (207 E. Washington St. in downtown Iowa City) for the month of November 2022, along with the work of many other artists in many mediums and styles!
(Photos in this post courtesy of Jeanette)
This wall includes paintings of women whom I
imagined symbolizing the courage of survivors
Click image to visit the new site
at jomyerswalker.com
Mentoring and Consultations
at jomyerswalker.com
Check out my new Mentoring, Consultations, Gallery and Commissions website at jomyerswalker.com! I’m excited to focus on individual and group Mentoring, individual Consultations, and Illustration, aspects of my career in which I’ve been developing expertise over many years. The new site will also host my original art for sale in the Fine Art Gallery and offer commissions for Painting, Illustration, and Project Design.
theleftbankstudio.com will remain here as a complementary site with more emphasis on charitable and spiritual activities and my day-to-day adventures. The Creating for a Cause page highlights products created to promote awareness and to raise money for special causes, featuring images from my artwork. Here on my blog I’ll continue to show you scenes from my life, and tell you about events as they come up.
The new site is the result of much brainstorming and work with wonderful collaborators. Find your next paintings and learn about commissions, consultations, and mentoring at jomyerswalker.com. I hope you will enjoy it!
Join us for my workshop Imagination Unbinds Hope, at Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat near Wheatland, Iowa! We will be painting intuitively, finding shapes in clouds and our imaginations, finding our voice. This is a day of discovery, meditation and release, enjoying the beauty of the Prairie.
Cost is $45.00 per person including lunch and art supplies. You can register online at the event page on the Prairie Retreat website.
Sunday Conversations, 16″ h x 20″ w
Update: The Octagon show was great (and windy!), I saw lots of friends and left new paintings at the Octagon Shop. (My original post is below.)
I’ll have this new painting, “Sunday Conversations,” at the Octagon Art Festival this Sunday (September 25, 2022, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.) along with other original watercolors, prints (including my illustrations of “Rufus Rutabaga Flicktail Finds His House”), and cards (including ones from my Improvisational Fabric Wall Hanging). The Art Festival web page now has a list of this year’s artists and a map to our booths.
These rocking chairs were inspired by the front porch of Our Lady of the Prairie Retreat near Wheatland, Iowa. I’m looking forward to returning there to lead a workshop on October 14 called Imagination Unbinds Hope. More details at that link, and in an upcoming post!
“After Finals”
(Iowa City scene)
Update:
I’m especially honored to have my painting included in the Traveling Show! The 2022 – 2023 schedule and preview are now posted on the Traveling Show page of the IWS website.
Original post:
I’m honored to have one of my paintings, “After Finals,” included in this year’s Iowa Watercolor Society (IWS) exhibition. All of the exhibition paintings will be on display for the IWS Annual Meeting, luncheon, watercolor demo, and award ceremony on Sunday, September 11, 2022 at beautiful La Poste in Perry, Iowa.
This year’s judge for the award ceremony and guest artist for the demo is noted watercolorist Sarah Yeoman, who will also teach a workshop at La Poste from September 12 through 14, 2022.
A number of the exhibition paintings, selected by the judge, will travel on and become the 2022–2023 IWS Traveling Show — keep an eye on the Traveling Show page of the IWS website for the new year’s schedule and a preview of the show! (At the time of this post, you can see paintings from the 2021–2022 show on the Traveling Show page.)
IWS membership is required to register for the Annual Meeting event and for the workshop. It’s a great way to meet and learn from other Iowa artists, and from a nationally-known guest teacher.
The vision of Remembrance Park is becoming reality! The Remembrance Park – Johnson County website has information on two special events planned to mark the opening of this “Wildflower Park to Contemplate the Origins of Johnson County, Iowa” (described in my earlier post Contemplating our past).
Flyer about the Sept. 5 dedication
(click image for website with full-size
flyer and more information)
Cover of the proposed booklet
The Remembrance Park Committee has also put together a proposed 12-page booklet for children, featuring my watercolor illustrations, to describe life in the area around the time that Johnson County was established. You can read the digital version on The Children’s Book page of their website. It has been fun and very interesting to be part of this history telling!
The church’s namesake,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
starts us on our Biblical journey
(The wall hanging commemorates the 75th anniversary of the founding of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center in Ames, Iowa)
Scenes in my improvisational fabric wall hanging tell the story of Easter, following a path from bottom to top. Just like a painting, this artwork required planning, and especially so because of its size and complexity. I started with sketches to experiment with the layout and people’s gestures.
Some of the sketches are shown below, alongside those sections of their final fabric design. Poet Phil Kemp wrote “The Meeting Place” to accompany the wall hanging, with stanzas for each of the Easter scenes, included here in the captions.
The wall hanging will be on display at St. Thomas Aquinas Church until Pentecost (June 5 this year), the conclusion of Easter season. The STA Art page is a guide to artwork you may find on regular display around the church and Student Center.
Previously:
THE MEETING PLACE
Did you meet Him that first morning
when John baptized him in the Jordan
when the dove descended and the
voice thundered: “this is My Son; listen to Him”?
Matthew 3:13-17
Did you meet Him on that sad morning
outside Jerusalem where around the cross
faithful women stood and wept at the
slow death of their beloved?
Matthew 27:55-56
Did you meet Him in the women
who went to perform the sad duty
of perfuming the body of the man
who had shown them the fullness of love?
Mark 16:1-2
Did you meet Him with those
who gazed upon the unbelievable
sight of the emptied cave, the ones
who heard, “He is risen; He is not here”?
Matthew 28:1-6
Did you meet Him on the stony road
running away from the failure of dreams
and not recognize in the stranger who walked beside
the object of your desire?
Luke 24:13-18
Will you meet Him here in
the breaking of the bread?
Luke 24:28-31
Will you open your eyes and see
that He is with you always
even to the end of the age?
“The Meeting Place” poem © 2022 Phil Kemp
Wall hanging photos excerpted from a larger photo © 2022 Bobby LeBlanc
(Click image to view larger)
I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with family members on Easter weekend and see my “Improvisational Fabric Wall Hanging” on display in the space it was designed for. The work commemorates the 75th anniversary of the founding of St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center in Ames. Its size (8′ x 12′) reflects the scale of the church wall, and allows room to tell the Easter story in a series of scenes created from fabric shapes.
The wall hanging will be on display at St. Thomas Aquinas Church until Pentecost, June 5. The church’s e-bulletin from May 7, 2022 has some of my reflections about the artwork and its meaning, along with a larger, head-on photograph:
I plan to focus on the individual scenes in an upcoming post!
Previously:
Expert hands assist in assembling
this complex piece
The peacock symbolizes immortality (link is to Wikipedia article on Christian symbolism)
Jo Myers-Walker's Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.