Anne Leuck Feldhaus Adventures & Art

From the archives...Still Life With Pears.

At a recent art fair I ran into some lovely customers that I have not seen in quite awhile. This is a commissioned painting that I created for them back in 2004: "Still LIfe With Pears". I started drawing still life compositions at an art retreat with my friends Erica Huntzinger and Rachel Weaver-Rivera in 2001...that was the start of a whole series of new work. Tomorrow I head up to WI for another long over due art retreat weekend with them. It's exciting to know that some other new theme may develop on this trip so many years later...

Back from paradise

Rich and I took a long weekend trip out to see my brother and his wife in Washington State at their beautiful lakeside cabin in the mountains. We had a great time: lots of relaxation, amazing food and kayaking...! 

My two favorite guys...next to my new favorite lake: Wenatchee

Rich found this fossilized rock on the beach...

I'm a big fan of the duo impromptu self shot photo...my brother Carl & I have been taking these for years...we have such a good time together if only we didn't live so far apart...

of course Rich managed to find the one musical instrument on the premises!  

Kicking back, watching beautiful blue striped dragon flies..little did I know that a short time later I would be a crazy lady caught up in a paddling frenzy trying to escape a swarm of mosquitos!

Happy hiking family...Linda & Carl with my smiling canine nephew, Willy!
 
The offerings at the Plain "Farmer" Market...this was a fun joke as there is only one farmer at the Plain Farmer's Market. We enjoyed these beets and fuschia colored carrots for dinner...served up with a side of goat cheese. Yum. I had never seen carrots of this color before, the farmer said they were "speciated".

Green Thumbs...not yet but my fingers are crossed...

Well after 2 back to back weekends of art fairs and all the loose ends I need to tie up before heading to the Fields Project on Saturday, I have no business going out and buying flowers but I had to. Last year all I had  on the deck was an azaela bush (which stopped flowering the week after I bought it). I need to see some color when I look out the window and the sooner I get these into pots and settled the sooner I have more color, right? (My thumbs are a fleshy shade of pink, no green in site). Mom, you know I wish you could snap your fingers and be here to guide me! My Mother and her husband Bill grow the most beautiful gardens around their home in the woods...I paint with acrylics, she paints with flowers. (...And Rich is taking care of the vegetable portion of our petite urban farm).

We Did...10 Years Ago Today

On a Tuesday morning, 10 Years ago today Rich & I got married on the shore of Lake Michigan by Reverend Lee, who we found in the Yellow Pages.  This was our fun little announcement that we made from photo booth pictures..it was an elopement. We have been together since meeting in January of 1991 in Milwaukee. I cannot tell you where the last 17+ years have gone, it's been like a blink of an eye. So we are off to Milwaukee for a long over do little overnight visit to celebrate this 10th Anniversary. Big Love to You Baby...I wouldn't be living this big wonderful art life without you, your never ending support and voice of reason!

May 1st

Our 112 year old frame house finally has insulation! They actually blew it into the walls from outside...only took one day.That hose is pretty wild, you could see as the fibers shot through it and all the pictures on the wall shook as the walls filled up. It's already quieter in here and now we won't freeze from all the drafts in the winter and hopefully avoid sizzling in the summer. Better conditions for making art!

Red + Pink

I had to get a picture of Kate in her pink and red outfit with Dot (the handmade/hand stitched character I made that one day you will see in a book!)...they match pefectly! Art work on the left ...kitty cat "Yoda" by outsider artist Cher Shaffer and a piece from art girl pal Mimi Damrauer's Bulls Eye series.

Pounce

My normally productive procrastination has gone to the wayside. I am addicted to etsy's POUNCE search feature. You can click and see all the most recently sold items...the hot list! Etsy is this amazing never ending cornucopia of beautiful handmade items and art and shops to explore. Here are a few of my most recent favorite items (in case anyone wants to buy me a gift!):

My Gardener Hard at Work...

I may have mentioned before that I had hopes of my thumbs turning green. My Mother is amazing with plants and flowers, I was hoping that gene would show itself by now...nope. Lucky for me my wonderful husband has suddenly turned into an urban farmer. Rich started all these plants from seed weeks ago and today started his garden in our yard. He had to move all my 'garden art' ...some rebar sculptures I made in college and that's one of my clay figures from the 90's - she looks very excited about the chives...I do get credit for those, they came from Mom's garden last year. They sat in a bag for 2 weeks before I put them in the ground...hearty little greens aren't they? This bird was hanging out with Rich, anyone know what kind he is? Hope these plants don't get to chilly tonight! It's supposed to be in the 70's mid week...

Playing tourist in my own town...

Three of my high school girl friends from Sparta came to visit over the weekend...it was fun catching up and hearing about life back home. We spent Saturday as tourists doing the Chicago Trolley Double Decker Bus Tour...a pretty good deal: For $25, you get a narrated historical tour of downtown with many optional stops at all the tourist spots. It was a gorgeous day and we were all enjoying the sunshine on our faces after such a long winter! I got some good photos that I hope to use in upcoming cityscape paintings...Chicago is such a beautiful city and I don't get down to the loop very often. Hard to believe I used to do it every day for work. You can see more  of my Chicago shots on my  Flickr page.

Sunday...back track

I'm backtracking a bit with this post. On Sunday I had lunch with my friend
Johanna in China Town (dim sum!), got to see her ubercool new loft, then
stopped by her fiancee's studio (master furniture maker Mark Cwik) to get
some reclaimed lumber...if I can call it that? perhaps recycled, re-used?
They were scrap pieces he could not use. I can't wait to paint on them.
Here is a photo of one of his beautiful Bubinga Tables (no this is not the
kind of wood I'm painting on):

After picking up my boards I delivered my print (top image): "Dreaming
Uphill" to Woman Made Gallery for their April 12th Art Auction. Then
came home and got creative in the kitchen with a new recipe. I did a
Butternut Squash / Hazelnut Lasagne. The recipe was passed on to me
from my art pal & jeweler, Sara Lenart. You can find the recipe at
epicurious.com It was pretty tasty,I felt guilty not inviting anyone over
to share it with us!

Earth Hour 2008

Earth Hour 3/29/08 Lights out in Chicago

My Candy Colored World...

Inspired by Kathy Frey's blog: "Taming the Tangle", I recently revamped my categories. She has one called "Personal Glimpse" I edited mine to "My Candy Colored World" it's just more of a focused peek at the everyday here. I also thought that made for a good name for my blog since I've always said my hues are candy colored, and as you can see here in these photos, so is my life!

In honor of the everyday..things that happened around here last week:

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• Home Improvement...we had the wonderful guys from Samanco working here this week, the jobs not huge, but closing the walls and ceiling back up made for a 4 day event. We now have insulation in our laundry room (the pipes froze last winter) and we have fabulous pendants hanging over the kitchen island....this will add so much ambiance to our dinner hour...not too mention dramatic lighting for our high stakes Scrabble games! Also replaced the very froofy brass fixtures that were hanging in the living rooms that join the kitchen. They are very simple schoolroom style period fixtures that echo the age of this old house. I love them...!! And a plug for Angie's List, this is how I found Samanco, they also did our bathroom rehab in our old house on Oakley....sadly that bathroom no longer exists as the house was torn down.

• 

• I hung my fun Birthday gifts from my dear pal Erica by my desk..shrinky dinks! She did a portrait of me and one of each of our hands...they are precious little talismans. She also presented me with this sweet hand sewn birthday cake! Perfect...I can take it with me on my annual sojourn.

• 

• I went to the Art Girls Pot Luck for the first time since December! We met at printmaker, Judy Zeddie's house. My big tip for the night was to get the business book "The E Myth Revisited". I went with the unabridged audio version...I have too many books stacked on my bedside table and I want to get right into this one...I can listen while I paint!
• 

• We hosted an easter brunch here for some of Rich's family, it was a fun day...my nephew Dexter made this great drawing of me and him:

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• My next assignment: Create a Blog Banner with art on it....I should have done that first!

41...Asleep in the Cascades

I had a wonderful trip out to the Seattle area last weekend for my 41st birthday. I visited my brother and his wife in Sammamish. On Friday we drove up to Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains, it was so beautiful! Every morning when I woke up I ran for my camera because the view with the sun coming up was so breathtaking. We had a great time cross country skiing and ate lots of good food. If you go, rent your skis at Plain Hardware, yes the name of the town is Plain! Photos are of my one and only most favorite brother, Carl & I and my 4 legged nephew Willie.

Prior Birthdays:

2008  41 = Lake Wenatchee, WA

2007 40 = Venice, Italy

2006 39 = Saugatuck, MI

2005 38 = Bedford, PA...enroute home from a show in Virginia

2004 37 = Punta Cana, The Dominican Replubic

If you can swing it, I highly recommend this traveling birthday idea...premise: Go to sleep or wake up somewhere you have never been before. I started in 04, you know what they say about all work and no play...this guarantees an extra little get away every year!

5 Degrees & a Snow Day...

This first photo was from yesterday, Alice will go out and sit on the deck when it is a mere 5 degrees acting as if it is a balmy 75 degree summer afternoon...she has also been known to sit there in the rain and in the snow. She is pining away for the neighbor cats who have opted to stay in for the winter. The words that set her off and we must whisper around here are: cat, kitty cat, chatty kathy (as we often call her since she is quite the talker) she gets so excited...ironically to get her to come in from those freezing temps I just say "here kitty, kitty" and she comes running..it's hilarious. The only other magic word is 'treats'!

The girls (well, Alice) had fun in today's snow storm...Izzy doesn't like to spend much time in the cold, she prefers to lay on her bed next to the old radiator snoozing away. She is such a sweetie, we went to the vet today for a blood test, she is on a new drug called Rimadyl which has really helped with her arthritis but it can do some funky this to an old gal like her so we had to make sure all was well...and it is! : ) While waiting for our results we met a 15 year old Beagle named Gus...he looked like a very wise old dog. Okay..time to go out and shovel some more snow!

A River Runs Through It

On Saturday I delivered my painting, A River Runs Through It, to Prairie Shore Properties on Central Street in Wilmette for display in their lobby. This opportunity came by way of the Wilmette Arts Guild, which I recently joined. Good to get some work up to the North Shore, I'll also be participating in a group show at the Wilmette Public Library in the spring.

After that I headed back into the city to an art opening for my friend Heather Gentile-Collins at a beautiful new venue called Flourish Studios. It's retail, therapy, art gallery & more. Heather painted a beautiful mural in the kid's playroom and her  wonderful paintings and prints are on display through the end of February.

And as long as I'm posting...my dear friend Erica Huntzinger...(who has this great new website!) had a very exciting opening at the Chicago Cultural Center in a group show called People of the Mud 2 - great turnout...and some wonderful artists..all clay. Also included, another friend of mine, Jason Messinger's cool tiles.

 

Gingerbread Addition...

We left Chicago on Sunday afternoon and headed up to rural Warrens, WI to visit my Mom & her husband Bill for Christmas....the road conditions were pretty treacherous, our usual 4 hour drive took six and a half hours. We awoke on Monday morning in their retreat-like log home nestled in the woods surrounded by snow covered trees and more Blue Jays then I've seen in a long time. After a good morning work out of shoveling snow we headed inside for breakfast and our 3rd bi-Annual Gingerbread House Project (note to Carl that is the infamous Blue Shovel).

It's been 2 years since we did this and I didn't have time to get any supplies - Mom said not to worry, she had everything we needed as she presented me with the pre-fab house kit that she bought at the store. It was already baked and stuck together! I said "we have to build something, they took all the fun out of it". I then realized we could use this little pre-made cabin portion as a base and create an addition! We made templates out of cardboard and Bill (a retired home builder of many years) consulted. I traced and cut the walls from the gingerbread dough then baked them. They got a little warped and some were thicker than others, we knew early on we might have some structural issues. Our first batch of icing was too thin, this also contributed to the problems. As you can see it took many hands to put this together.
Mom did a beautiful job decorating the front, I was distracted by falling walls and only managed to get half a coconut roof, and the backside done. Bill ran down to his shop and cut us a little piece of wood to help support the roof...we should have stopped while we were ahead: our roof was falling in. We raced to get a photo before the crash. Now we know how to do it next time...(we will use a drill and use bamboo skewered beams). It still was great fun and as many art teachers have told me, sometimes it's more about the process and the journey than the end product. We laughed a lot and had a good time, I was impressed that it worked up to the point that it did. We went on to have a lovely Christmas Eve with more family and 3 crazy dogs running around.

 

Terrific Trades...Continued

This is the piece that I received in trade from my talented friend Kerry Rolewicz who now lives in Lincoln, Illinois where she and her husband are raising their 3 adorable young boys. We rarely see one another but she came up to do the One of a Kind Sale this year. She works with mixed media, charcoal and oil pastel - it looks fantastic on my Peacock Blue walls!

This necklace was created by my favorite jewelery artists and wonderful couple all around Sarah Stanton and Jay Kukor. We have been trading art for years and I have acquired some of the most unique and beautiful rings, bracelets and necklaces that I have ever seen. They use vintage buttons, typewriter keys and other interesting objects in their pieces. Below is another photo of their work: be sure to visit the website: SarahStantonDesigns.com

Open Studio Becomes Winter Wonderland

We had a busy day here yesterday...as usual, I forgot to take pictures while people were here! The weather was clear at the start but by the evening we were having a little snow storm - so beautiful...! We'll see how today goes it's very sunny and bright outside but the 6+ inches of snow we received over night will probably keep many folks in for the day. Either way, yesterday's sales made it more than worth the effort, and it was fun to hang out with customers, family & friends, my Dad & his wife are here visiting from Wisconsin. We had an excellent dinner at Buona Terra last night and take out from Friendship Restaurant on Friday - our new asian favorite - found on YELP.

 

 

One of a Kind Wrap Up...The Goods

Good help is hard to find...I found it! This is Kate...she helped me out for a few days at the show and I needed it, I moved from my location last year and our sales and traffic doubled.Thanks to her wonderful assistance, for the first time I was able to actually go see some of the show without risking missing customers. I also made some great connections with other artists, not to mention brokering some great trades with them! Here are 2 from Minnesota artists (ironically), I'll share the others later this week. Below...from Fiber Artist Susan Hinckley, this beautiful piece is titled "Let it go". It was a hard choice, but this one really spoke to me because I feel like I have made a conscious effort recently to let go of so many things I was trying to control and make happen in my business and suddenly those very opportunities are finding me. I have loved her work since first seeing it a few years back at One Of a Kind.

This painting is by Brian Jensen, a wonderful painter and illustrator whom I met for the first time at the show. This beautiful piece was painted on pine, I love how he allowed the natural wood to become part of the composition. His display was great - like a huge puzzle yet each piece could stand alone. This was one of 4 in a set, I'm regretting that I did not also get the one that goes below it.

Okay...off to bed, I have so much to do  tomorrow!

My (very edited!) CLTV Interview...

I'm almost embarrassed to post this...but hey you can't knock free press. I was briefly interviewed at the One of a Kind Show & Sale today by CLTV/Metromix Chicago. The link to watch it is here - the video clip is on the right hand side, under Chicago Designers @ The One of a Kind Show. I was nervous...I speak without thinking first...and say too much - so they edited a lot. My mission is to make people happy with my art? well yes, but I somehow didn't get the whole dog adoption awareness message in there. Next time! (I really should do some interview practice because I'm never happy with the results...add that to the "to do" list!)

The show really is spectacular this year, enormous and beautiful..so many wonderful talented people in one place. It's been great fun to see so many of my artist friends from out of town and to connect with many of the customers whom I've met at this show over the last 7 years of exhibiting. I've also got some good artist trades for artwork coming on Sunday...check back, I'll be posting all my new eye candy!

Neon Matisse - In my Bathroom

 

This is my favorite new piece of art, it's called "Have a Nice Day". I purchased it on Ebay from amazing Canadian folk artist, Helene Lacelle (Neon Matisse is her ebay seller name).  I finally framed it the other day (thank you Target - I just mounted it right on top of the mat that was cut for an 8x10) and hung it in the bathroom, which is all tile from floor to ceiling, not easy to nail into but I worked a few into the grout line. It has transformed the room for me, thank so much Helene! Be sure to check out her auctions and website, just promise not to bid against me!

Autumn...I can see clearly now

The screen is gone and a whole new world has opened up out my kitchen window. Alice & Izzy prepare for winter hibernation.

Art Girls...

Last night I hosted our monthly Art Girls get together...it was "Pot Leuck" I made my Mother's great Seafood Lasagna.  As usual..I forgot to get out the camera until everyone was on their way out. We had a great time and shared lots of good information. It's inspiring to trade leads and resources and hear eachother's news, big commissions & sales, new venues etc. On resource we'll all be checking out soon from  Kathy Frey is the Women's Business Development Center, they offer seminars with business counseling included in the fee. I also shared about my favorite art/client/exhibit database management software Eartist - from Artscope.net. As usual the food contributed by all made for an amazing meal from the appetizer to the desserts....and yes there is still plenty of talk about doing our own cookbook! Girls in the photos Match, Kathy, Mimi, Kate & Eva sporting their flower child candy bracelet head bands! And Sharon & Match...

Free Rice

Now in addition to www.Websudoku.com, I have a new diversion...Rich just told me about Free Rice, it's a vocabulary game...and for every word you get right 10 grains of rice are donated through the United Nations to help end world hunger....I donated 610 grains today, and I don't feel guilty!

Harvest...

Rich planted 2 small tomato plants late in the summer, they are suddenly producing like crazy...in November! It was supposed to freeze the other night so he plucked them, they'll have to redden up in the sun during the day. We still have not been below 32 degrees here in Chicago.

We went for an unplanned 20+ mile bike ride today....It was gorgeous riding through the forest preserves on the northwest side of the city. All golden yellow and orange with the sun filtering through and crunchy leaves on the ground. It felt great at the time....but I'm really stiff now. Can't wait to paint tomorrow...I started some large (36x48) canvases from my Alabama road trip sketches: