Welcome to the Blog Of CPSA DC210 San Jose

CPSA District Chapter 210, San Jose, CA

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Highlights of May 2014 Meeting

Our May 2014 chapter meeting was at By-Th'-Bucket in Santa Clara and University Art in San Jose.  Members and guests came from as far away as Dixon and Valley Springs. 

As usual, our members have been busy!
  • Maryann Kot: Best in Show, Livermore Art Assoc. Spring Show, out of 330 entries
  • Sue Marchand, 1st Place in Drawing/Pastel category, Livermore Art Assoc. Spring Show
  • Carol Eicher, 3rd Place in Drawing/Pastel category, Livermore Art Assoc. Spring Show
  • Joanne Spurr, two Honorable Mentions in Drawing/Pastel category, Livermore Art Assoc. Spring Show
  • SEVEN members’ pieces accepted into CPSA International Exhibition!
    • Janki Chokshi
    • Gemma Gylling
    • Denise Howard
    • Mike Purdy
    • Megan Seiter
    • Chris Swetlin
    • Ranjini Venkatachari
  • Marian Gault: Pacific Scribes show at Filoli
  • Denise Howard: Article in UKCPS “Talking Point”
  • Denise Howard: accepted into state fair
Gemma Gylling's two-day workshop in April was a resounding success by all accounts, including the survey results, which we reviewed.  A big THANK YOU once again to Gemma for volunteering all her time and energy for this workshop to our chapter!  And thank you to volunteers Maryann, Mike, Sally, Sue and Joanne for deftly handling the Bothwell Art Center arrangements, signups, and facility setup and takedown.

For our chapter show at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto in September, we need to find a juror.  For this year’s chapter show, “Explorations in Colored Pencil III” at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto in September, we will do like last year and have it juried only for awards.  To that end, we still need a juror.  We will have less wall space than at last year’s show, so instead of allowing up to four entries per artist, we will limit to two or three entries. Ranjini has volunteered to do the prospectus design.

Phillip has spoken to the owners of Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore and confirmed that they’d love to host our group for a day of drawing under their massive shady oak trees; they only ask for a couple of weeks of advance notice, to avoid having too many groups show up at once.  Phillip is now going to ask them for a couple of open dates and then we’ll pick one and do it.  This will be a great opportunity to try plein air drawing!  Yes, it gets quite hot in Livermore in summer, but the ancient oak trees provide great shade and we’ll make sure everyone stays hydrated.

Group orders:  if anyone is ever interested in putting together a large enough order of a particular art supply to get a volume discount, let me know!  We can do that via online retailers like Dick Blick or Jerry’s Artarama.  Quite often there’s a significant discount at, say, 25 sheets of paper; nobody wants to order that much individually, but everybody uses it, so if we go together on an order we can make it happen.

After “show and tell” we settled up the lunch bill and drove over to University Art in time for the Prismacolor presentation at 2:00.  The 45 minutes flew by; Prismacolor representative Shelley Minnis covered not only the colored pencils but their blender pencils, art markers and pens and marker blenders and how to use them.  She had examples of beautiful drawings that have been created by some well-known colored pencil artists using various surfaces.  She mentioned that the blender pencils were recalled and taken off the market for a few months while they diagnosed a manufacturing problem that had caused them to change due to one ingredient, and were just recently reintroduced.  So they do pay attention and respond to customer feedback.   Then it was time for Prismacolor door prizes, and out of about 25 people in the room I think five of the prizes went to DC210 members!  There were sharpeners, small sets of markers, and best of all, a full set of 132 Prismacolor pencils in a tin!  If you weren’t there, see what you missed??? 

Our next meeting will be Saturday, August 23, 11 AM - 3 PM in the Community Room of the Milpitas Police Administration building, 1275 North Milpitas Blvd, Milpitas.  Ranjini Venkatachari will present her techniques for working on sanded board and mounting and varnishing work so that it requires no glass covering.  Thanks to Maria for arranging the venue!