It's been an interesting three months around here.  The "here" being parked in Keren and Bobby's driveway, with Michael pretty much living in the basement studio space that he's been graciously loaned.  The boys have been schooling, forging, and doing a lot of playing with the neighbors.  The number of foam swords, hand-forged knives and dirks and daggers, leather and copper scraps, and rivets and x-acto knives that I trip over daily has been increasing steadily.

Michael's been painting a good 12-16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and been coming to bed after sunrise most nights.  He's living on coffee with heavy cream, overseeing the occasional forging episode in the back yard, running back and forth to the art store and the hardware store, stopping by Jim's place to drop off and pick up paintings that are being scanned for prints, and taking me with him on most errands so we have time to talk. 

There's also been the occasional Starbucks, a trip to the Fire on the Mountain Festival in NC to see some master blacksmiths and an iron pour, a couple quick visits to the land to see it in different seasons, strawberry picking, and a very quick trip up to Chicago to help Mom celebrate her 75th birthday.

We also fit in a last-minute trip to Rogersville (our closest town if we get the land) to participate in their Appalachian Spring Art Festival. We wanted to meet local artists and folks, and get to know the place a bit better.  It was tiny, but we had a ball and met a lot of lovely people.

I've been alternately working on back-end stuff for the art sale (and doing some good procrastinating on those tasks), taking care of life and food and kid stuff, and doing some internal listening that's long overdue.  Bits of hyper-ish activity interspersed with a lot of thinking and some much quieter days.  It's been necessary, and good, and there's more of it to be done, soonish.

But first ...

The Land Ho! Art Sale! 

June 25th to July 8th.

In case you missed it, this is the one that Michael referred to at the end of his last epic post, and the one he's been obsessively painting towards.  The idea that he could do a painting a day for 2 weeks has been changed a wee bit, but 14 new works in 3 months is certainly nothing to sneeze at!  They're all acrylic paintings based on photographs from the trip, ranging from 11" x 14" to 36" x 48". 

If you want a preview of a lot of the pieces, just head over to the New works section of his website.  There will be prints available of all the new stuff, and in most cases in several sizes.  These will be limited edition Giclee prints, on either paper or canvas.  There will be some older works available also, a few by the boys, and some postcard sets based on trip photos. 

The pricing runs the gamut from about $40 to just under $6000.  The larger works are priced at gallery rates, which we know are not for the average buyer, but trust we can find some somewhere.  We know it's asking a lot but God is able, and we're doing what's in front of us ... with what we've been given, to see how it all plays out.  It will take a village, and you all are a big part of ours. 

We'd hugely appreciate it too if you'd share the link below with anyone and everyone you can think of that might be interested in a piece, large or small.  The farther the word spreads, the better!

The link takes you to a landing page on Michael's art website, where the link to the actual shop will go live on Monday around 6pm EST.  The sale ends on July 8th, and purchases will be shipped within two weeks after, by July 23rd.

Beyond the sale, who knows?  We're not making any plans yet, there are too many variables at play to be sure about anything.  We'll see what's in front of us when this is wrapped up, and go from there. 

Onward ...