Jo Myers-Walker's Blog

My booth at the 2012 Holiday Market

This past Sunday I had a booth at the third annual Holiday Market at Prairie Moon Winery just outside of Ames. Lyndsay Nissen has done a beautiful job with this event three years in a row, creating a market for and promoting local artists. The location is lovely; they were selling wine, coffee, gelato, and wonderful cakes, and the exhibiting artists offered an array of works including jewelry, pottery, special soaps, hand-dyed scarves, and ornaments.

Lyndsay is an artist herself, and you can see some of her paintings in the loft and the tasting room at the winery.

Bassinet painted with helpful dogs
(currently holding painted pillows)

I’ve been rearranging The Left Bank Studio by color, and still bringing more things out of the vault. At right is a baby bassinet which my dad and I made. It holds a legal-size mattress for a newborn, and as the child grows it can be turned upside-down and used as a toy box. (I can make things like this to order.)

Shown below are “neutral” and “blue” collections. The floor lamp at left is made from steel curved like the railing outside the Studio, using the same method.

Stop in during gallery hours and take a look, whatever your preferred palette!

Update: I’ve sold the little bank in Gilbert, and now I’m based in Iowa City. Check out my blog to see what I’m doing these days!

See, I can do neutrals!
(front room at The Left Bank Studio; curved-steel lamp is at left)

The Blue Period
(middle room at The Left Bank Studio)

This past Monday I was in Des Moines to help hang an exhibit at an interesting location – Gallery West, in the Imaging Waiting Area of the VA Central Iowa Health Care System! The regularly-changing exhibits in Gallery West are part of their “healing environment” initiative, meant to make this waiting area a welcoming, relaxing place for the people coming through. The color brightens it up, and there is a lovely hanging system — Olson-Larsen Galleries of West Des Moines advised the facility on the hanging system and helped the staff learn how to use it.

Two of the friendly and dedicated VA staff,
who installed my exhibit at Gallery West

The opposite wall of the exhibit at Gallery West
in the Imaging Waiting Area

We installed 14 of my works including a man’s head in ceramic, women’s heads sculpted from handmade cotton paper, and a variety of watercolors. About 700 people come through the waiting area every week, needing medical imaging (like CT scans) for all kinds of reasons, and I met some of them while I was there. Often family members come along, and wait for them — it’s hard for families, too, to see loved ones suffer. I’m very grateful for what our veterans and their families have done for all of us.

There will be a small opening reception for the exhibit on Wednesday, November 28, 2012. I’ll talk about art and healing, which fits right in with the VA staff members’ interest in the healing environment. I’m thankful for the opportunity not only to display my work, but also to meet these dedicated people.

Tree of Hope in hatchback

They said it could not be done… we said, yes it can! Here John M. demonstrates the advantage of a hatchback by transporting a large tree in a small car.

As it turned out there wasn’t room to include it in the Octagon’s Festival of Trees (which ran through Dec. 2), but it’s available if you’d like to have the Tree of Hope for your own (comes with its own supply of hope!). My Art of Living exhibit is at the Octagon through December 22, 2012.