Fun Filled Weekend!

I spent a good part of Friday night it in the hot tub - Just Chillin'. I have to do that when the time arises, with Art of the Carolinas and all of her details pulling at my brain constantly! Just relaxed at home for the evening. We got up Saturday morning and loaded the car with all of our purple stuff and headed to Greenville for the ECU game. ECU vs. UCF. We had fun tailgaiting as usual with our friends. Lots of good food and cold beer. The Pirates ended up winning, but it really wasn't a "sweet win". Whatever. We'll take it! Stopped at the local store and picked up a couple cases of ECU purple and gold Bud Light for future games.
Pretty cool.

I photographed it against a traditional Bud Light, so you could really see the color. JP, wanna come over for a cold one? You have to wear something purple, and I'll share!

After the game, we visited Joe's Mom, Marge and spent some time with her. After lunch the next day, we were heading out of town back to Raleigh, when we saw this huge horse sculpture in the back of a pick up truck sitting outside of a shop:

So we turned around and stopped at this guy's shop. It's called the Hobbyhorse Workshop and Gallery at 811 Dickinson Ave in Greenville. The owner/artist/collector/sculptor, Jonathan Bowling, just happened to be there on a Sunday afternoon putting the final touches on this horse before heading to Port St. Lucie, FL. He showed us all around and boy, was it cool! That guy had all kinds of crazy stuff in his building and all over the backyard. Here are some of the photos I took.

What a great find! We really enjoyed stumbling upon this wonderful artist. He's from Kentucky and was a graduate student at ECU. Jonathan Bowling. Check out his Web site. He collects all kinds of random items, then assembles them together to make a statement. Awesome work! Thanks Jonathan! I bought a couple of fish to remember this afternoon...

So, after arriving home at 3pm on Sunday, I still needed to get some studio time in, so off I went to paint. Joe was a good boy and cut the grass, then payed the bills. I was still playing in the studio! I love my days off. Here are a few projects I started:

These are some more of my little "myPods" in the very beginning stages.

These are 24 x 36 paintings in the very beginning stages. Just textured with gesso, then I added the reds on the bottom this morning before work.

Here is a detail of the texture:

Let's see where these take me!