11-12 Drawathon highlight: "Touch Drawing"

There is always something new and different that shows up at our events. This time around we were lucky to have Susan Bakaley Marshall appear with her "Touch Drawing" equipment. I have to admit that I did not get enough of this! We also had some great accapella singing by Mary Anne Driscoll, who basically took the quotes from Rob Shetterly's "Americans Who Tell the Truth" Paintings and turned them into rhythmic lyrics!

Draw-A-Thon at Waterfall Arts

I'm very excited to announce that we will be holding our next Draw-A-Thon this Fall in Belfast, Maine. This time it will be designed to compliment the exhibit: "The War on Peace - Alan Magee and Rob Shetterly" on view at the Clifford Gallery at Waterfall Arts, (http://www.waterfallarts.org) which runs from Friday, September 7 to Wednesday, November 21, 2012. This event is open to the public with a special offer to veterans to come have their portraits drawn. All are invited to bring their creative energies and ideas to help us envision how we could better spend our war dollars. Some artists will draw their own ideas, some will translate your requests (ideas) into images and others will draw portraits of veterans. Artists interested in participating should contact Martha Piscuskas at: martha@waterfallarts.org or me, Kenny at kenny@kennycole.com. Lunch will be provided for participating artists. Click on the link on the right to print out a flyer or for more info. Our Draw-A-Thons are great social gatherings and wonderful opportunities to create alongside fellow artists...please come on by and join us!

East West Highway

Here's a new design for the upcoming battle to stop the development of the East west Highway plans here in Maine. Check in here: defending water.net

to learn what it's all about. If you'd like to print out this image, click on the link under "links". Stay tuned as we may yet organize a printathon around this issue.

Intense!

That's the only word I can think of to describe the scene at the Harlow Gallery after spending 10 hours hanging our 2 year retrospective! It was really great to finally organize all of our efforts into one big showing. My conclusion is that many small ideas, sketches and thoughts really do add up to a much bigger force of creativity. Walking through this show is like drinking five cups of coffee and realizing that by gathering together in creativity you can really mobilize hopeful energy towards change.

Art-A-Thon success!

What a great day in a quite busy place: the University of Maine's Student Union. This March Art-A-Thon was organized by Umaine students, Dan White, Caroline Robe and others through their Peace Action Maine chapter. There was a sumptuous spread of nosh-able goodies and a bottomless bowl of hummus, which by the end of the day was near finished. We had a fairly steady stream of students drop in for some between class art-making...many who were quite curious about our silk-screen rig and methodology. Nora Tryon kept things moving along so well we were able to design and cut a two-color stencil in one day! In addition to students we met faculty advisors, Ilze Petersons from the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine and even some interested individuals from the town of Orono proper. They even had a mini concert with two students on acoustic guitars hammering out some originals and favorites. Congrats to the UMaine gang!

Participating artists

Big thanks to these artists, who participated in our January 21 Draw-A-Thon at Harlow Gallery:

Brian Reeves, Cynthia Ahlstrin, Deb Fahy, Edward McCartan, Emily Johnson, Helene Farrar, Ken Gross, Kenny Cole, Lisa Burke, Lisa Davis, Lisa Wheeler, Lynne Harwood, Nancy Barron, Natasha Mayers, Nick D'Alfonso, Nora Tryon, Page Conway, Pat Taub, Peggy Cope Mascher, Priscilla Jenkins, Ramona du Houx, Rob Shetterly, Steve Burke, Suzanna Lasker, Wendy Newbold Patterson Image: Jenny McKendry

We Drew!

It was a great time...I was happy to meet a bunch of new artists and we even got taped for Occupy TV! Our ability to photo silk-screen has not yet been perfected, so we cut up a stencil version of William Hessian's "Sheep No More". Thanks everyone for making this Draw-A-Thon a great success! (Click on "Flickr Images" in the links column)