final show; Winter in Bloom

Come celebrate the years of joyful art shows that the store has mounted with this final colorful showing of Winter in Bloom artwork featuring the work of Lauren Prospere! The Artist’s Reception will be on Friday night January 9 from 5-6ish PM with Dave’s pizzas, fancy foods and celebratory beverages..

Come honor Lauren and all the artists with this special evening of vibrant images and good byes.

The show will be up late Monday January 5 through Saturday January 24.

Art has always been an important part of my life; from grade school craft projects, to painting and ceramics classes in high school, to being a graphic design and digital media major in college. I spent my early twenties interested in surface pattern design (and to this day I have a huge library of designs online)! That hobby went on the back burner while I worked as an art director at a magazine, it I found that typesetting and page layouts didn’t quite scratch that creative itch. So I delved back into digital art and tried watercolors! (Fun, but not my thing..) I lost my creative spark once again when my kids came along, it felt like there was simply no time. Eventually I was ready to jump back in and spent the nap times and evenings drawing landscapes, flowers, and birds, many of which are on cards here at the store!

A couple years ago I wanted to try something new, so I took an online painting class. Excellent decision! It was stress-free, fun to experiment, and the best part, there was a focus on my favorite subject, flowers. All of these paintings start with a “chaos layer”, essentially a lot of mark making with extra paint and layers of collage. After that it’s time to figure out, “what looks like a flower to me?” and start blocking things out. Then the fun part, start adding in as much detail as you want, until you feel like it’s done. I’m excited to share this series as l’ve loved every minute of creating all these bouquets. They’re expressive, full of color, not quite realistic, but best of all they make me happy, and I hope they conjure up some happiness in you as well!

Lauren