Cancellation Time

We've cancelled our appearance at Telfair Art Fair and are returning home to Wyoming. We're looking forward to getting back home and working in the studios.

Early Ocala News

We rolled into Ocala earlier today and stepped out of the van into mid-70's temps since a cold front moved into Central Florida yesterday. This weekend will certainly present the weather we love; low humidity and cool temps.



Barrie's carved and gilt frame that adorns

There'll Be Bluebirds (now in a private

collection at Florida.) Thanks a million,
Fine Arts For Ocala. WOOHOO!

Since the show mentioned they might use some of our images for advertising in the Ocala Star Banner news today, we bopped into a BP gasoline station adjacent to our hotel to obtain a paper. And use our art, they did! Barrie's carved and gilt frame appears on the cover of the weekend insert announcing the art show, and then on page three of the art show spread AB's painting, Only You Beside Me, features at top right.






AB's painting, Only You Beside Me (now in a Florida private collection), is

one of the two works selected by 2012 FAFO judges that helped bring them to

their Best of Show decision. (Click on the images and they'll get bigger.) 

Winter Springs Festival of Arts

Show judges Trent Tomengo and Robert

Sindelir awarded us with a goody. WOOHOO!

We've finished our first show of the tour and it was a good one for us despite the 90 degree heat. Sponsored by Winter Springs Chamber of Commerce, this group treats artists very well by providing us with a beatiful show setting, close to the booth ample parking underneath dense and dark oak trees (what a blessing), and some of the best food we've ever been served during a show (Really, hats off to the show since they served us two breakefasts, two complete hot lunches with the best cream-filled cupcakes ever, and one awards banquet dinner with the best multi-variety fancy cheesecakes ever. WOOHOO!)




A full moon sets behind the west end of the 2013 Winter Springs Festival of Arts very early Saturday morning. The venue stretches along a beautifully landscaped walkway complete with arbored bougainvilleas and fallen soldier monument.

Fall 2013 Tour Schedule

Here's our itenerary of fall venues I promised a few weeks ago.

October
19-20, Winter Springs Festival of Arts at Winter Springs, FL, booth 317. Been there, done that. Won Award of Distinction. WOOHOO!

26-27, Fine Arts For Ocala, Ocala Arts Festival at Ocala, FL, booth 96. Word has it that we'll be featured in an Ocala newspaper spread about the show to be published Thursday, Oct. 24.

November
1-3, Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival at Pensacola, FL, booth Warhol 6.

9-10, Temple Terrace Community Arts Festival (east Tampa near Bush Gardens), booth 56.

16-17, Telfair Art Fair at Savannah, GA, booth is in green section.

Completed Gypsy Caravan Auricular Frame

Gypsy Caravan

©2013 AB Word & BL Bryant
Soft pastel w/watercolor on rag board
Shown in its fully gouge-carved gold leaf picture frame
19 x 29 inches framed

FINALLY: Gilding Gypsy Caravan Auricular Frame

With confidence and diligence, Barrie gets his gilding on during several late night studio sessions last week while preparing for the forthcoming fall tour. Scroll down in the blog to see the details about carving this little beauty. WOOHOO!

Preparing for Fall 2013 Tour

Barrie shaping a cove using one of his new Ashley
Iles carving gouges despite the hour being tea time.

AB has done plenty of new paintings, as usual. Why can't Barrie keep up the pace with frames? AB says if he'd stop taking pictures of himself he'd get more frames made. HA!

Here's Barrie carving one for the painting in the background titled Aren't We a Pair, and both artists feel this new work will be a contender as one of their favorites.

We'll be posting our fall schedule soon on the blog, but it is already featured on our website at merglennstudios dot com along with plenty new work. We're keeping the website updated most often, as we should. WOOHOO!

Gypsy Caravan Auricular Frame Carving Progress

Here's the progress on Barrie's carving project. It's fun looking at the difference between the carved and uncarved elements. It's taken a while to get all this carved and shaped, but Barrie is confident that the rest of the project will not take nearly as long since there's quite a bit of design and thinking that took place to achieve the carved parts. Except for the grotesque at bottom and the auricular patterns at top center, the rest will be just carving the elements running in the opposite direction of what's already been established. It's really an exciting project and a harbinger of frames to come. WOOHOO!

Gypsy Caravan Frame ©2013 BL Bryant -- work in progress

Shaping Auricular Frame for Gypsy Caravan

Here's Barrie's latest frame showing the work in progress. He caught the carving fever while working on There'll Be Bluebirds (see it pictured in the previous blog post below) and thus chose to up the ante for this new project. Using several historical references from two important books, one by Jacob Simon, The Art of the Picture Frame: Artists, Patrons & the Framing of Portraits in Britain, and the other by Deborah Davis, The Secret Lives of Frames: One Hundred Years of Art & Artistry, Barrie created a preliminary full-scale drawing on graph paper and then transferred the drawing to the "blank" eight-quarter bass wood frame he cut and joined. He'll be posting more pics later this week, or early next detailing progress as well as the finished frame once it is ready for gilding, and certainly the completed project once gilded and prepared for the spring tour. Now we hope you enjoy these...and don't forget to click on each picture so that it will enlarge. WOOHOO!



This is the frame "blank" as prepared and ready for shaping and carving



Barrie using a jigsaw during the first stages of shaping

Spindle sanding is the next stage of shaping

Filing clean edges with rasps and rifflers in the warm studio. The painting resting on the mini easel belongs in this frame!

Here's the shaped frame ready for carving!



Bluebirds FRAMED in Auricular Style

We're fast at work in the studios getting ready for our spring tour. So here's one we've just readied for the road, and we're pretty excited about it. Barrie created a shaped, carved, and gilt Auricular style frame for AB's painting, There'll Be Bluebirds. And we have a strong feeling that, since this frame has brought on so much personal excitement, Barrie'll be making more frames similar to it. Carving is definitely cool. Now click on the image to enlarge it. WOOHOO!

 

There'll Be Bluebirds
Soft pastel & mixed media on watercolor paper
© 2013 AB Word

Shown in its shaped, carved, and gilt metal leaf frame
© 2013 BL Bryant

2013 Spring Show Schedule 2013

We have been notified by all but one of these shows that we've passed jury and been accepted. We suspect that the one we've not heard from yet will put us in the show. So we're going ahead and posting our tour schedule, and it's one that's chock full of Florida locations where we've shown before as well as two new venues at Cedar Key and Sanford. Florida really is the art show mecca, y'all, and we love the shows there.

We're also looking forward to returning to Hilton Head Island for our third time at that venue, which is sponsored by Coastal Discovery Museum in a beautiful setting amidst the live oak trees. So come out and see at a show or two. WOOHOO!

APRIL
06-07, Tarpon Springs Fine Arts Festival at Tarpon Springs, FL
13-14, Old Florida Celebration of Art at Cedar Key, FL (55 miles southwest of Gainesville)
20-21, Chain of Parks Fine Arts Festival at Tallahassee, FL
27-28, Art Market at Historic Honey Horn at Hilton Head Island, SC

MAY
04-05, St. Johns River Festival at Sanford, FL (north Orlando)
11-12, Pensacola Art Museum’s Art in the Park at Pensacola, FL