Dauna managed to take some pictures before a number of pieces were sold.  For friends and family, this was what much of the fuss was about — a complete rearrangement of furniture, lots of dust bunnies, a multitude of printed tags, labels, and signs, and lots of glazing.  Oh yes, and picture framing — lots of framing, or matting & bagging.

Many thanks to our customers and supportive friends and neighbors who made the event a success.  Look for new images on the website and in the store.  Very soon you will also see more pottery and the scented art will be added to the shoppe as well.   Your business has made it possible to forge ahead!

Enjoy the scenes of the Gallery.

Saturday, December 3:  1:00pm-600pm at the Kiser Studio Parlor Gallery

There will be a multitude of new and familiar items for sale – for yourself or for gift-giving:  Stoneware & Raku sculptures, vases, Morticia Pots, and functional organic pieces, Giclees, Prints, Greeting Cards, & a 2012 Calendar of art images you can order. There will be incense, burners, oils, and accessories, individually or in sets ready to give.

You can preview some of the paintings and prints here on our website Gallery Shoppe and in the Kiser Art Gallery on Yessy.  We may add some images here to whet your appetite as well!

Stay tuned, and do Contact Us if there is an original or one-of-a-kind sculpture you’d like to buy in advance.  It will give us the means to create more originals before the Open House!

Oil painting in progress, begun in July of 2011.

This image is of an old farmhouse behind the family farm in Minnesota.  The farmhouse belonged to my Great-Great Aunt and Uncle, whose descendents moved about a mile away, off to the right of the large clearing (and down the hill).

Childhood memories almost always involve this old house; playing in it until the floors fell through and it became too dangerous, or role-playing around it in the woods down the hill behind and to the left of it.  Behind the house and down the hill is the Crow River, one of the few rivers in the world that flows north.  Spring flooding is normal, but the heavy floods of 1965, 1997, and 2010 brought the river part way up the high hill, across low-laying farm fields, and through the town of Delano.

These pictures illustrate the progress of this painting.  It is from a photograph taken in 2007.  Today the house nearly completely degerated with time.  The lush greens of Minnesota vegetation and trees are evident in the painting although most of the details and highlights in the fields and trees are yet to be added.  Layers and layers of transparent colors create the thick depth of the woods behind and beyond the house.

The next step is to finish the house.  Several subtle colors and the raw planks that make up the walls have yet to be detailed.  The final steps will be to fill in the tall grasses in front of the house and then highlights in both the trees and fields.

Below shows some of the steps in the creation of the image.  I’ll add more pictures as the painting progresses.

I began this painting after my wife gave me a book of Salvador Dali’s artwork for my birthday in November of ’99.  Dali’s work sparked in me a realization that a lot of what we think about keeps us trapped in the ridged structure of time.  Dali used the bull in several of his images, which inspired me to do the same for this one.

The four shoes on the bull stand for all of us — the average person working outside, at the office, in the sports arena.  The melting clock is another Dali element.  It and the bull stand for Time in its fluid state.  We don’t see that Time is fluid and so are enslaved to what we perceive it to mean.  Produce, produce, produce — more, better, faster.  Life rushes past, we rush through life, and then Time gets away from us and runs amock.  We become overwhelemed and easily toppled over.  The figures represent how fragile all of us are in our need to keep up with Time and try to make the most of every minute.  All the important trappings of the modern day are strewn about, and we end up stopping anyway to recover and repair the damage.

Rushing around doesn’t really get us anywhere any faster.

There is a self-portrait of me in there somewhere.  Can you find it?

I also wrote a poem for the Painting.

You can purchase a giclee of this painting from our Gallery Shoppe or from the Kiserart Gallery on Yessy.com.

You can get a copy of the poem, too, with your order.

Clouds of confusion swirl around us as we try to find the solution to a problem.  Known as “the veil of illusion” in some eastern religions, these clouds reflect our fears back to us so that we determine they are all we have from which to choose our solutions.

Our emotions often both obscure an answer and point the way to another one.  Sometimes we think too much, and our “logic” actually confuses our thoughts even further.

Peaceful image for meditation

But if we allow ourselves to breathe deeply a few times, think a little less and feel a little more, we may find that small areas in the clouds have opened to reveal more clarity.  Once we allow thoughts and emotions to work together, answers arrive more smoothly and with much less anxiety.  Surprisingly, the optimal solution is often something quite different than the one either our mind or our emotions wanted it to be.

This image is the second oil painting created with my non-dominant hand. This one is painted on canvas board.  It began as a spiral healing image for a Myst Online/Uru Live storytelling project but, as you can see, has since morphed into something quite different — although still rather relaxing to view.  In addition, it is now also included as an artistic example of lateral storytelling/teaching that is part of the Edummersive Worlds virtual classroom prototype in Second Life and OSGrid.  And… it became something much better than my dominant right hand (and left brain) “thought” it should be.  I am pleased to say that my left hand is becoming skilled rather quickly for having no prior training.  There isn’t any paint splattered around the room yet — that alone inspires confidence to give it the brush again.

You can purchase a print of this image here in our Gallery Shoppe or in the Kiser Art Gallery on Imagekind.