This morning, I got some love from the writer and DIY extraordinaire behind Button Bird Designs, Angela Statzer. She saw my mason jar paintings at Bliss Home this month and asked to feature me on her blog.

As you have probably gathered, I said yes.

She also asked me if I'd be willing to give away one of my mason jar paintings. 

To that, I also said yes. (Sometimes I'm that easy, what can I say.)

So if you'd like the chance to receive the mason jar painting shown below for free, there are two things you must do:

1) email me at beth@bethmeadows.com and ask me to put you on my email update list, and

2) read the post about me by Angela and leave a comment telling why you love mason jars. I'll pick my favorite response Wednesday and that person will be the lucky recipient.

As always, if you like what I do and want to support, I have mason jar paintings for sale on Etsy and at Bliss Home in downtown Knoxville.

And, thanks again, Angela. If you come back through Knoxville, let me know so we can work on being friends in real life.

I'm pleased to announce that Megan Cole has won last Saturday's picture challenge! She used her unbridled intelligence to find me in the photo below, and for that she will receive a gift.

She has won a mason jar painted on a thin sheet of laminated panel. It's orange because I like orange and not because I live in Knoxville. But, Megan, if you love the Vols, then you and this painting are a match made in heaven.

Either way, I hope you enjoy.

Introducing mason jar paintings on slate roof tiles. 

Available now on my Etsy Shop and at Bliss Home in Knoxville, TN during September.

I've talked a lot this year about my desire to collaborate more.

We have a new artist at 17th Street Studios named Dean Yasko who has taken one of my old drawings from this show and added his own flair. And now he's going to talk about it...

"My most recent work has been inspired by collaboration and spontaneity so I decided to try and "stay in the lines" and add some color to this fantastic drawing. When you were a kid, did you ever do that thing where you use a bunch of different colors of crayons to color in a piece of poster board, cover it with black tempera paint, and then scratch a design into it? When Beth gave me this drawing to contribute to the collaboration, the first thing I noticed was that the print was black with white lines. I knew that I wanted to add color but I wasn't sure how. After some deliberation, I came across a childhood drawing using the method described above and decided that it would be fun to try to simulate this technique.

Thanks for checkin out our drawing. If you would like to see more of my work go to www.deanyasko.com"

I had an epiphany a couple of weeks that it would be good for me to clean my studio out and quit looking at old work.

As a result, I am going to begin posting images of my old work here, and I need your help.

If you are interested in any of the pieces, email me at beth@bethmeadows.com.

You may pay the super low sale price OR we can make a trade.

Things I will trade for:

• artwork
• Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop lesson
• a photography lesson (I have a Nikon D50)
• a seamstress to alter clothing (mostly hemming)
• food/produce from garden
• fashion home decor/arhitectural magazines from the past year
• canvases
• fabric
• a new road bike (let me dream big)
• a truck (again, dreaming)
• any other ideas?

My only rule is that please don't be creepy. Thanks.

So here is the first piece of artwork:

This piece is 22.5 x 18.5"in the frame. The image floats on the black matte and the frame is pale yellow. 

It features a series of screenprints based off of photos I took at dusk while driving my car*

They were intended for a book, but I ended up framing several of the sets I made instead of binding them. I worked on this project during 2007.

$30 or trade me $30 worth of something: beth@bethmeadows.com

*I do not advocate this foolish behavior

All the photos below are currently works in progress. I typically wouldn't show these photos but wanted to see if it might push me to finish them. 

I like anything that makes me think of Boo Radley and the gifts he would leave in the tree for Scout and Jem

which means I like the idea of the Little Free Library

which makes me want a house even more so that I could do something similar.

I don't know if she still does this, but Cynthia Markert used to laminate prints of her paintings and leave them around Knoxville. I know because I have one on my refrigerator. I found it stapled to a piece of plywood on an abandoned building downtown a few years ago. I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to take it, but the way it was presented made me conclude it was meant for its finder.

I know I don't have to own a home to imitate this secret giving and receiving. It's something I'm going to think more about

but not right now because I am up to my ears in unfinished work.

I had a studio visit with Kelly Hider (fellow artist and studio-mate) last week who told me that it might do me some good to finish up what I'm working on and then focus in on one specific project.

I've been thinking a lot about this, how I could take one thing that I'm thinking about and push it as far as it will go. I'm not sure if I'm that type of artist. I'm pretty scattered, except for the mason jar paintings, which is the most consistent series I've ever stuck with, but that's not really what I'm talking about anyway. There's nothing I'm trying to solve as I make the mason jars.

Kelly and I are extremes; she's been working on the same project for at least six months and will continue to work on it over the next year.

I can't imagine that I have that kind of focus in me.

Also, I've always had a weird feeling about Series. If I plan to make 6 similar paintings, by the time I'd get to Number 6, it would be so far removed from Number 1 that it wouldn't look like a series anymore. Is the point not to meander or is ok for thoughts and ideas to evolve? How could they not?

Right now, it doesn't matter. I'm making a bunch of work (partly due to to my FB hiatus) and feel like it's all funneling toward a focus that may come in the next year or so. It's enjoyable at the very least, and isn't that what it's all about?

The funny/annoying/great thing about being an artist is that you can never get away from it.

I always think about vacations, and how when I travel "away from work", I can't go anywhere without visiting an art museum or schools with an MFA program.

If I sit on a beach and read a book (wow, that hasn't happened in a long time), I can't turn my brain off to quit thinking of images that I could use later. If I stare at the ocean, I'm moved by the colors that make up the water, and how they look against the sky or the sand, and how that expanse relates to a tiny figure bobbing up and down. And then I think about how I could make something using all of those thoughts.

Going through a normal day, every idea, every material might have potential.

Actually, it's really not annoying at all.

Instructions:

Save this photo to your computer.
Find me in the photo.
Circle me in red.
Save new photo.
Send new photo to beth@bethmeadows.com

First place will receive a special gift.

Photo by D. Yasko