My Upcoming Show (July) at Arcata Artisans

I'm getting ready for another show at Arcata Artisans. As a member, I get to have a show with two other members in the Featured Artist Gallery every year.

It's been 8 years now, and each time I try to come up with something "new" to display. I've created a lot of different bodies of work to do this. Among them "the Art of Food" - pictures about food and eating, "Maps" -
 a series exploring the journey of the heart, mind and what regions look like from the perspective of my vision; "Early Botanicals" - a series of drawings and paintings based upon very early scientific drawings and "Ordinary Angels and Goddesses" and "the Lost Family" - pictures painted on fence boards that depict
young men and women with a background of stars and stripes.

This time it is "Alchemical Diagrams" - based upon very early drawings about chemistry. Alchemy is the transformation of base materials to precious materials.It is a metaphor for transformation - the process of becoming wise.

It's awkward coming up with new work. I know I can always rely on the old tried and true Dog and Cat painting. But it is also rewarding and challenging to try new things. The more I push myself, the more I learn about myself, and art, and the world.

Bowl of plums - matted pastel painting

This is a pretty little oil pastel painting to brighten up your kitchen or dining room. Starting bid $14. includes shipping! click here to bid "the darker the world gets the more art shines" attributed to I can't remember Contact Me --- @ WiseStamp Signature. Get it now

Rethinking websites and domain names, and online sales

I've spent the day working on website stuff.
This is not because I had planned to. It is a crisis, as usual. I clicked the link for my website - artstreetgallery.com yesterday and got nothing. So I had to rewind my life to figure out what happened.

My former website provider - Valueweb, was bought out by Hostway and I was emailed several times starting in September of 09 that the change was going to occur.
And it did, uneventfully.

But when I tried to log into the new provider's site hosting service it was nearly impossible. I actually had to call tech support and I finally figured out how to log in.

At any rate, it was determined that my domain name had expired. Five years (that's how many years I had purchased) sure went fast! Originally I bought the domain name through Tucows, and their affiliate that was called Domain Direct. Now I was
told that Hover (think little hummingbird) had purchased the that service. So I went about finding out how to log into the Hover service. Hover likes to take days off, like Good Friday. And weekends.

So they are pretty much unreachable. They don't even seem to have
an autoresponder - to tell me, "Thank you for your email. Our reps are
spending precious time with their families right now. Just as soon as they
return to their desks they will answer your email..." And besides that their domain registration fee is a whopping $15. a year! With no discounts. I tried to sign up for 10 years in the shopping cart and it was $150. Everyplace else is around half that price.
I did find an email in a super old aol account that I had when I paid the $29. for 5 years registration. It told me my domain name would expire soon and if I acted now I could save 15%. Boy! What savings. That's $2.25 I think.

So. I'm thinking about not having a website even though I put artstreetgallery.com
on about the last 200 pieces of art that I have sold. Did I mention I've been paying $15. a month for website hosting? Let's see, over the past 5 years I've spent $900. on
website hosting. This might have generated about $50. worth of sales. I can and do much better than that on eBay.

Maybe if I have a blog that says artstreetgallery.com all over it I will still come out high in google searches. That seems logical. Maybe no one has ever even logged on to artstreetgallery.com. If anyone was looking for my art they could always use my name, Joy Dellas.