The 3rd annual Piedmont ART WALK is up next Saturday, the day before Mother’s Day. We have over 40 artists selling art on their porches; net proceeds support art in schools. Scan the site and map on bit.ly/PiedmontArtWalk2022.
My botanical special for Mom includes a small framed botanical print of your choice, a signed art card, and a botanical gift wrap for $45. Or maybe Mom’s a Bug Hotel type of girl? Hanging garden art shelters native pollinators right in your own backyard. Check them out in my gallery www.BonniesBotanicalArt.com. We’re still waiting to hear from the city about masking but will keep the porch uncrowded regardless.
I have a variation on the theme. I transformed a fallen Valley Oak limb into a wood sculptured nest. It’s my first woodworking attempt and, if nothing else, you should come see the nest. Not cheap however because I really love the nest.
I’ve currently completed a Valley Oak limb with oak galls.
Through a newfound website remove.bg.com I can print the white background in black. Like it better? Check out the original (NFS yet), buy a signed and numbered Giclee print, or a card. Lots of choices along with botanical books, tea towels, bags, and aprons.
This is a pen and ink Japanese Cedar bonsai. I took an all-day outdoor class and we were not allowed to bring pencils which, if you think about it, means no erasing. Omg! But the mistakes just turn into more branches and I got to watercolor the gray pot later. I’m hooked. Come see it Saturday.
Welcome back, everyone. The Covid canceled exhibits are still on hold. I will surely LYK.
I veered off a bit during the Pandemic. I received the always thrilling “Congratulations you have been juried into The Bedford Gallery exhibit, If a Tree Falls” e-mail, but not for botanical watercolors—for woodworking?! It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. An iconic 325 year-old Valley Oak had fallen and artists were invited to choose pieces of wood to give the old tree new life. I pointed out a protrusion along the trunk, the arborist sawed it off and once in my hands, it felt like a nest. Generous fellow artist, Marc Weidech, dug out an off-center core with his lathe and I went to work. Sanding, scraping out bug frass (petrified poop) and cambium, finer sanding, oiling to reveal the natural wood grain, then vigorous buffing. Three spotted oak galls in the nest suggest rebirth. The surrounding oak bough is embalmed in glycerine giving this iconic Boundary Oak “A Nest of Its Own.”
This was an exciting way to spend a lockdown. Also accepted was my largest yet Bug Hotel #50 made of Valley Oak and forest floor organic detritus. The rebirth theme continues as this shelter fosters habitats that encourage biodiversity and remind the public that insects need our help. They also call attention to the simple beauty of nature. Parking in their Lesher Center lot in back is free for the first hour and there are parklet restaurants spanning blocks. The exhibit runs into February and has 64 artists and 96 pieces that are fascinating, beautiful, imaginative and weird! Check ahead for hours of operation.
Due to Covid, I participated in a low-keyed open-air Piedmont Harvest Festival exhibit this Fall and was recently notified that the 150th Anniversary of Golden Gate Park exhibit, Canopy Trees of GG Park, is again delayed until Sept – Dec 2022. Until then it’s online. https://www.sfbg.org/ggp150artexhibit. Click the image of the redwood slice to see my artist’s page.
Upcoming in January we are back at Berkeley Botanical Garden’s Julia Morgan building for our NorCal ASBA exhibit. I plan to show my rarely exhibited work of Dichondra leaves cascading down a wall.
Painting class has resumed with masks, distancing, and foggy magnifier glasses. Continuing the theme, I’m painting a Valley Oak bough heavy with fall leaves and oak galls, the birthplace of harmless tiny native wasp larvae. If you collect oak galls for your table decoration, consider temporarily keeping them in a bag—it can be like a maternity ward in there—remember open bag outdoors.
Happy Holidays everyone. Email if you’d like to shop for last minute botanical gifts, books, cards or prints in my studio. See my 2021 Spring Newsletter for a photo of botanical gift offerings. Bring friends, enjoy Grandma’s fudge, cookies, tea or wine. You bring the people, I’ll have the party.
Otherwise, Rocky’s Market in Oakland’s Leimert District carries my art cards. You can make your own last-minute gift pack. I also highly recommend their nonprofit www.nourishthepeople.org for donations and volunteer opportunities to fight hunger locally. Hunker down folks and take care.
Welcome back. Are you back? I’m working on it. I’m having an art show on my front porch, along with 40 other Piedmont artists throughout town to benefit art in our schools. We’ll be spaced and masked; I’m vaccinated and ready to GET OUT! Right? Bring your dogs, your family, your people. We’ve got this down.
I finished painting the lemon/orange/avocado triptych on vellum and it was chosen and artfully rearranged for the cover of Limoneira’s 2020 Annual Report. My first!
I’m still astonished and humbled that Piedmont Living Magazine featured me (under my married name Joanne Palamountain) for their March cover profile story. I was lucky to work with a well-known travel writer and a photographer with nowhere to travel at this point. The attached article focuses on my Piedmont family history and career. The cover photo in the park showcases my botanical art. Yes, that Jeffrey Pinecone keeps showing up. Who would notice the tree behind Ms. March and her pinecone are Sequoia sempervirens—not Pinus jeffreyi?
Happy and Healthy Holidays to you. This year instead of asking family around the holiday table what we’re thankful for, we might also ask what we’ll miss this year. It turns out they are often one and the same.
But I feel the beginning of Pandemic optimism. We know more about how to stay safe and the creative community output is growing beyond belief. Who knew our local business entrepreneurs had so many great ideas? And many others are trying to help those who cannot.
Last June, twenty-one Piedmont artists created The Piedmont Art Walk supporting art in local schools. City approved, spaced and masked, I had 5 people on my porch at all times from noon until 7 pm—several hundred not counting dogs and babies. Whew. Citywide posters with QR Codes, footprints on our front sidewalks and signs up my steps led people along flat box hedges covered with small framed prints and Bug Hotels; then to the upper porch with easels of larger art. Five more steps up, I sat behind a table in the doorway like the great masked OZ. No barking, no crying, no contact, no candy dish, only dog biscuits. Nevertheless, everyone loved it so we’re planning another Art Walk next May. It was good to safely share my new work with people walking, exercising and desperate to do anything at that point. Me too.
Postponed, were my exhibits for The Garden Club of America, Piedmont House Tour, Harvest Festival, and the 150th Anniversary Celebration of Golden Gate Park, ‘From Sand Dunes To Forest’. My Redwood painting was juried into that exhibition but the Celebration itself was juried out by a greater force! The committee has graciously posted the exhibit online along with historical information and photos about planting the Park’s eroding sand dunes with canopy trees all those years ago. They hope to reschedule the Park-wide celebration next Fall.
This summer I painted a triptych based on the fruit grown by Limoneira, a company my son works for. It was a special challenge because I painted on calf skin vellum (slippery to paint but luminous) and since we’re not holding art classes my teacher advised me online. I’m happy to finish a successful painting from home but miss my classmates and teacher. The UC Berkeley Botanical Garden will be displaying this piece all of February—no longer in the beautiful Julia Morgan building but in the comfort of your slippers. The virtual exhibit is called 12th Annual Plants Illustrated Exhibition and they remind us, no framing necessary. Too late. There will be a live Zoom opening reception, date yet TBD. www.botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu
Finally, as expected our Botanical Art class will not be holding our year end art exhibit/holiday party, but several of us contributed to a booklet called, A Cabinet of Curiosities. It’s an age-old concept for artists to create a composition painting notable objects, bits and pieces of favorite things. Our book emphasizes natural things. We are having a live Zoom reception December 13 at 4 pm where each artist will exhibit and describe their work in the booklet. I will forward the information when I receive it Dec 12, if you email me before to let me know you’re interested in attending.
Otherwise I have the booklets if you want a small gift for an art lover. My porch is open in December for anyone who wants to pick up holiday gifts. Besides framed and unframed numbered prints and Bug Hotels (see my website), there are: botanical art notecards, aprons, framed mini prints, wrapping paper, playing cards, Gardens of Alcatraz books and more. Let me know if you want to stop by—bring your masked bubble people. Or come by Rocky’s Market in the Leimert district of Oakland to see my paintings on their wall plus a selection of signed art cards. I’m sending those profits to the Alameda County Food Bank. Keep up the good work everyone!
I’ve missed you all, waiting patiently through many art exhibit postponements. My redwood painting did get juried into the 150 year Anniversary Celebration of Golden Gate Park but, of course, postponed. Ditto for the Garden Club of America’s Flower Show, the Children’s Support League House Tour, Bouquets des Arts, and several others.
The good news is four Piedmont artists stepped up to the creativity plate to organize the 1st Piedmont Art Walk. It’s a social distanced, masked, no touch art show in our front yards, to benefit art in schools, because those fundraisers have been cancelled. This is our way to help. We have an interactive map to scan on red posters throughout town. Please stop by my porch for a look. I’ve been framing my small Botanical prints in collectible frames these last months and I will be selling them along with several Bug Hotels—hanging garden art where pollinators feed, rest and shelter-in-place! Larger prints and framed art can be brought outside upon request.
You can otherwise purchase my signed Botanical Art cards at Rocky’s Market in Leimert, with donations going to the Food Bank for each card sold.
Holiday Party and Art Open House Sunday, Dec. 22 4 – 7 PM Piedmont, California
Hello
Art Patrons,
I’ve finally hung most of my botanicals throughout the house and I’d like you to see them. I’m having an art Open House and Holiday Party next Sunday from 4-7 pm. Besides the art, there will be Grandma’s fudge and homemade cookies. There will certainly be cocktails, beer and wine for the holiday weary. My studio table will be full of botanical gifts: aprons, wrapping paper, playing cards, note cards–our newest group project is a floral tote bag on black background. Stunning! I have a half-dozen Bug Hotels looking for a home plus framed or unframed prints for those who like to frame their own. Please join me and bring your friends and relatives.
Many of you ask about the evolution of a painting. It’s always in flux. My Coastal Redwood project has been evolving since June when my friend gave me a Turkey Tail Mushroom embedded with redwood twigs from her garden in Ben Lomand. I drew the mushroom on tracing paper, then began the watercolor on paper of a redwood branch with small green pinecones because the background was to be red bark. One pinecone from a neighboring tree was not a Coast Redwood after-all, rather a deciduous Dawn Redwood. I had to scrub that perfect green cone from the paper and paint a botanically correct Coast Redwood cone over it. At that point, I decided against using a bark background after discovering a ‘tree ring ink print’ video on YouTube. Smitten, I bought a few redwood trunk slices from a firewood source and borrowed a sander and blowtorch from the Tool Library. My teacher and classmates stopped me after sanding but before a blowtorch fiasco (meant to burn the softwood and raise the rings). They convinced me to try colored pencil and make a rubbing instead, painting around the redwood branch. I had to trace all the rings three times, and my tree was 52 rings old—but who’s counting? It turns out a colored pencil is fun and quite versatile. Then I decided to transfer the mushroom only using shades of graphite. New to me as well, graphite was the most fun of all. So this piece has overlapping watercolor, colored pencil and graphite as its medium. To see the final work you’ll have to come to my Open House next Sunday because it’s currently getting scanned by my fine art printer. I hope it will also be juried into the Golden Gate Park 150 Year Celebration exhibit in Spring, and the Mt.Tamalpias Florilegium project in Fall. Meanwhile, the work will be shown at Berkeley Botanical Garden’s Rare and Endangered exhibit Jan 17- Feb 5.
11th Annual Plants Illustrated “Rare and Endangered Plants of the World” Berkeley Botanical Gardens 200 Centennial Dr. Berkeley, CA www.botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu Jan 17- Feb 5 2019 (closed Jan 20-21, Feb 4) Artists’ Reception Jan 18, 4-6 pm (RSVP for Free Garden Entry)
Garden Club of America Flower Show Claremont Country Club on April 15-17. Piedmont Garden Club is hosting this 201 club national event and I’ve been asked to share my Bug Hotels and Botanical Art. It is free and open to the public.
Be sure to visit Rocky’s Market in Leimert off Park Blvd in Oakland to see my botanicals hung on the wall and pick up last-minute note cards. And I still plan to blowtorch that redwood slice and make ink prints. I’ll let you know.
You’re
correct. I did not get around to writing last quarter’s newsletter. I had
minimal news. I worked on my bamboo painting, skied and recharged. Loafing, my
Dad used to call it.
Lucky for me, talented artist/writer Katie Korotzer filled the void. In my studio, she interviewed and photographed me for the webzine, Piedmont Exedra, then proceeded to create an extensive eloquent four-page, ten photo Artist’s Profile within a week. She writes that my Pinecone “bristles with energy.” Nice. She includes a sneak preview photo of my Golden Bamboo painting still taped to the easel board. “Look closely to see a bit of fauna on the flora” the caption reads. LMK if you can’t find it. Click Reader View for full-page images.
Piedmont Harvest Festival 711 Highland Ave. Piedmont CA. Sept. 22 11-3 pm Piedmont Park
Come see my Golden Bamboo painting in the Tea House in Piedmont Park from 11-3 pm. Snack at a food truck, sample hometown garden edibles and baked goods, shop the farmer’s market and take a chance on the cake walk. Get face painted! This leaves us an hour to hop over the San Rafael Bridge to the Marin Art and Garden Center by 4-6 pm for my other Artists’ Reception the same day. It’s an art extravaganza! ASBA is celebrating our 25th Silver Anniversary with a catalogue of current members’ art, Celebrating Silver, depicting silver in the image or plant name. My piece will be a detail of the larger Silver Birch painting. Our Northern CA. branch will exhibit our ‘Silver’ catalogue artwork:
Marin Art and Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Ross, CA. Artist’s’ Reception: Sept 22, 4-6 pm Exhibition: Sept 23–Nov 16, Monday-Sat 9-5pm www.magc.org
As a bonus, the 22nd Annual ASBA International BotanicalExhibition will run daily alongside our chapter show at MAGC. This will be its first year on the West coast. The show contains some of the best modern botanical art created worldwide. I didn’t enter because, well, it’s next-to-impossible to get in and artists are required to show an original and then to sell it . . . which I’m not quite ready to do. This Botanical Art will be the best of the best. Don’t miss it!
Sunday, December 8th from 2pm – 5pm is the annual Botanical Holiday Art Exhibition. You’ll have another newsletter before then. If you missed the Harvest Festival, you can see my Golden Bamboo painting during the holidays at Woodhall in Orinda and find the fauna on the flora in person.
I
hope to be back at the Berkeley Botanical Garden for a Rare
and Endangered Species Exhibition Jan 17-Feb 5 but have not yet
painted anything rare or endangered. Ideas?
2020
will bring the Garden Club of America Flower Show to
California at Claremont Country Club on April 15-17. Piedmont
Garden Club is hosting this 201 club national event and I’ve been asked to
share my Bug Hotels and Botanical Art. It is free and open to the public.
Details later.
I’ve
also had big fun with little kids. In oversized aprons and tiny chairs,
elementary school children and I splattered and glazed ourselves and dozens of
kid-sculpted, kiln fired ceramic flowers for Piedmont’s Big Art Show benefiting
art in Piedmont schools. These bright colorful sprouts of flower power on metal
stakes immediately sold out at $15-20 apiece. They are blooming in gardens
throughout town. My Acorn Giclee print made one buyer happy as well.
Next
year I will notify you in advance of the ASBA Online Art Auction. I
am happy to report that someone got a good deal for a great cause on my
unframed Aspen and Nasturtium prints.
Do
you know: When planting, to determine what areas of your garden will be in
shade this winter, step out late at night during a summer full moon. Those
garden shadows you see will mimic your daytime shadows in winter. As opposed to
sun shadows, moon shadows are long in summer, short in winter. Plant by the
light of the moon?
Finally,
I’d like to welcome a whole new passel of art patrons who’d signed up for my
newsletter in the past. I just found the list with your names! As always please
unsubscribe at will.
My fellow botanical artists and I will be holding our annual Holiday Party this Sunday, Dec 2 from 4pm – 7 pm at Woodhall in Orinda. Come to see our latest watercolor creations, sip wine and enjoy hors d’oeuvres crafted by our members. We have a sale table of botanical prints, cards, scarves, aprons, placemats etc. New this year are multi-purpose floral botanical clutch pouch’s— sized for tablets and priced for gift giving. These will sell out. I’ll display my life-sized Aspen painting and my almost finished Magnolia grandiflora. Please come and have a look!
BOTANICAL ART EXHIBITION
at Woodhall in Orinda CA 501 Orindawoods Drive and Kite Hill Road
Sunday, December 2, 2018 4pm – 7pm
In mid-January, I will take part in an art exhibit at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. The theme is ethnobotany, which is the study of traditional uses for plants throughout a region or culture. Quaking Aspen was used by native Americans as tent poles and drying racks. Aspen wood is now used for manufacturing wooden matchsticks. The straight grained wood is covered in fire retardant and the tip is dipped in paraffin. Two chemical layers are added to the tip and dried—portable fire. The annual exhibit will be held in the 1911 craftsman bungalow, Julia Morgan Hall, in the Botanical Gardens. I don’t have my gallery sitting date yet, so check with me later if you want to catch me there. Otherwise, I’ll be at the reception Jan 19, 2019.
Berkeley Botanical Gardens 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA
January 18 – February 6, 2019 (closed Jan 21 and Feb. 5)
Artists’ Reception January 19, 5-7 pm.
(If attending the Artists’ Reception, please RSVP to me so I may place you on the free garden entry list.)
If you’d like to browse through my botanical prints, cards, aprons, placemats, gift wrap, succulent wreaths, bags, and pouches for sale, I will have my Piedmont studio table brimming with them during the holidays. Nearly all of my paintings are on my studio walls and most prints are framed and matted, or sold unframed for half the price. Just give me a call (510) 604-6141 to set a time and date. Come eat Christmas cookies, sip coffee and wine! Let’s have a party—you bring the guests! Or come solo… I’d like you to see my artwork.
Happy Autumn. My life-sized Quaking Aspen painting is finished and you can view it this Sunday at the Piedmont Harvest Festival. It’s a hometown festival in the park featuring garden edibles grown locally. You can taste jams, salsas, spreads, breads and cookies. There’s a jazz fest, farmer’s market, carnival, food trucks and a silent scarecrow auction. A renovated Japanese Tea House holds the art exhibit where my Aspen will hang. If you can’t find me there I might be on, my favorite, the cake walk. The Festival is free and the parking is easy. You can even walk the few blocks from my house.
PIEDMONT HARVEST FESTIVAL
Sunday, September 30, 2018, 11-3 pm
Piedmont Community Hall
711 Highland Ave,
Piedmont, CA
Not much news this time. Our touring Alcatraz Florilegium was on exhibit at the Marin Headlands Visitor Center in the historic Fort Barry Chapel over the summer. Sorry for no advance notice but you can always check my website for upcoming exhibits. www.BonniesBotanicalArt.com.
I’m hard at work on a Magnolia grandiflora. A magnificent name for a huge magnolia blossom surrounded by large reflective (tricky to paint) leaves. It might be complete by the holidays, but I’m taking a creative detour for a few weeks to paint in Maui. My kindergarten girlfriend (who’s the real artist) and I will paint tropicals at her dad’s place in Napili Kai.
Meanwhile, this Fall, try to head to the Sierras and see the golden Quaking Aspen shimmer and light up the hills. I recommend Sorensen’s Resort for a rustic cabin in the Aspen woods with a wood-fired sauna and one fantastic restaurant. www.sorensensresort.com. And it’s in spectacular Hope Valley. We can all use a bit of that.
Marin Art and Garden Center: Celebrating Trees Ross, CA / May 20 – June 24, 2018 – Thursday-Sunday 10-4pm
Marin Art and Garden Center
30 Sr. Francis Drake Blvd
Ross, CA
Artists reception May 20, 3-5pm www.magc.org
Here’s what’s happening in long form. I’ve been juried into the venerable Filoli Garden Botanical Exhibition for the fourth time. They chose my nasturtium painting from the Alcatraz Florilegium Collection. The exhibit, A Palette of Flowers, celebrates an abundance of spring flowers and runs until May 20. The historic Gardens, with their own colorful flora, provide a spring recharge and the cafe provides my favorite dessert…
Petit Fours!
On April 21, I’ll be showing my Bug Hotels, pollinator-friendly garden art, at a private garden in San Pablo. Completed this year is the Bento Box Collection—see my website. All of you art patrons are invited to a pre-Garden Tour event. The focus is native plant gardens, and I’ll also bring a few watercolor prints and cards. The official tour, Bringing Back the Natives: Art and Music in the Garden will be held on May 6, and I will be showingmy work at a garden on the tour in Orinda. These tours are free, but you must register online.
Finally, The Marin Art and Garden Center has asked ASBA members to show their work in the May-June exhibition, Celebrating Trees. Hopefully, my three-foot-tall watercolor of a life-size section of Aspen tree will be ready, but I hope to bring the Three Birches and Jeffrey pinecone if space allows. An artists’ reception is May 20, 3-5pm and the show runs May 20 – June 24, Thursday – Sunday 10-4pm. This Center is home to a peaceful walkable garden with a large bright gallery space.
My aspen painting grows with a mind of her own. Enchanting, but nothing like I expected. I expected blinding autumn brilliance. Instead, I unearth an elegant deciduous sapling on paper, it’s one-hundred golden leaves ‘undressing for winter‘, as my friend and poet, Joe Lamb, writes. Scientifically named, Populous tremuloids, the quaking aspen has a flattened leaf stalk that trembles and quakes in the slightest breeze. Aspens grow in colonies which explains why their leaves turn color in individual stands. That’s why you see a grove of gold aspen trees against a mountainside of still green aspens, or one golden grove against a mountain of slender bare aspen trunks, already undressed for winter. Each stand is propagated by a shared root system coming from the sprout of one seedling. Clonal aspen groves are one of the largest living organisms. One male colony in Utah covers 107 acres and includes 47,000 trees. It is estimated to be 80,000 years old. So are you intrigued as to how the art turns out? Cross your fingers since I’ve already dropped it once, but I should finish soon. Come see it! I can’t wait to find out myself.
