Hello Art Patrons,
Welcome Springtime! For you speed readers, here are my upcoming exhibitions:
Filoli’s 20th Annual Botanical Art Exhibit: A Pallet of Flowers
Woodside, CA / February 23 – May 20, 2018
Filoli Gardens
86 Canada Rd. Woodside CA
www.Filoli.org
Bringing Back the Natives: Garden Volunteer Preview
San Pablo, CA / April 21, 2018, 1-3pm
1718 Hillcrest Rd
San Pablo, CA (note: stairs)
Garden Tour: Art and Music in the Garden
Orinda, CA / May 6, 2018, 10-5 pm
26 Southwaite Ct
Orinda CA (free online registration required)
www.bringingbackthenatives.net
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 showing my 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.
Yours,
Bonnie Bonner
aka Joanne Palamountain