Anne Leuck 8/7/08 Anne Leuck 8/7/08

Uptown Trade...

More new FUNctional ARt...At Uptown I traded for these lovely tumblers with MPLS clay artist Emily Dyer...her work is so whimsical and sweet. It was hard to pick from so many fun pieces but that pink interior got me...so I decided to make it a threesome...I can't wait to sip hot chocolate out of it on a blustery fall night! Yes, I"m more of an autumn girl than summer - glad things finally cooled off a bit here in Chicago today!

Anne Leuck 8/6/08 Anne Leuck 8/6/08

A wonderful trip...

Monday night I returned home from my trip to Minneapolis for the Uptown Art Fair. It was a great week, I was able to spend time with my Mom on the way up and my Dad on the way back. I traveled and stayed with my best friends from childhood...it was such a treat...lots of belly laughs...you know the ones where you laugh so hard you cry. Also got to have my booth right next to my good friend Deb Le Air:

And the art fair was my best of the summer so far...which I will count myself lucky as folks reported sales (always a relative thing) as being way down from last year.

This little pup...Frida...a Red Heeler mix hung out in my booth for awhile..she was very sweet and affectionate as I was needing some dog love being apart from Izzy & Alice for so long. Notice her crazy spotted tongue!

This is a photo of me with the Wood girls left to right: Michele, Heather (with daughter Karlie) and Dawn - we grew up across the street from one another in Sparta...their house was like my second home (I remember the day Heather was born!). Dawn is my oldest friend and like a sister.

This is my crazy friend Lee who I also grew up with...she and Dawn were amazing atheletes and I was always tagging along trying to keep up but NEVER did. She makes me laugh hysterically and is just an overall outstanding human being who I do not see enough of!

Anne Leuck 7/31/08 Anne Leuck 7/31/08

Minneapolis Uptown Art Fair this Weekend...

Anne Leuck 7/29/08 Anne Leuck 7/29/08

Canned

Illustration Friday Word: CANNED

Have not particpated in IF for weeks..months! I drew this in my sketchbook, scanned and added some digital baby blue. Another fun way to productively procrastinate!

Anne Leuck 7/28/08 Anne Leuck 7/28/08

Art Re-Treat

Back from an amazing art retreat weekend in rural Wisconsin with Rachel and Erica ..and remotely our dear friend Lois Keller.

Rachel started this amazing new series of paintings and created several lovely water colors...

Erica pulled this one out of her hat...this large piece consists of 10 separate panels:

Lois shipped us a box of treasures, included for each of us was a lovely drawing (this is the one she sent for me) with sentiments and her wishes for each of us and our creative lives for 2008.

And these are some of my pieces - I did paintings on cardboard:

These 3 women have impacted my life and art in so many ways, we have a very magical connection that has only strengthened over the last 7+ years. I'd love to share more as so many wonderful things transpired...but I'll just have to leave you with these snippets since I'm scrambling to get myself and things together before I leave Wednesdayfor my trip up to Minneapolis for the Uptown Art Fair. Not an easything since I've had a non-stop whirl wind of fun, adventure and travel over the last few weeks. I feel so lucky to be taking all these trips and for the chance to reconnect with so many wonderful friends and family.

Anne Leuck 7/24/08 Anne Leuck 7/24/08

From the archives...Still Life With Pears.

At a recent art fair I ran into some lovely customers that I have not seen in quite awhile. This is a commissioned painting that I created for them back in 2004: "Still LIfe With Pears". I started drawing still life compositions at an art retreat with my friends Erica Huntzinger and Rachel Weaver-Rivera in 2001...that was the start of a whole series of new work. Tomorrow I head up to WI for another long over due art retreat weekend with them. It's exciting to know that some other new theme may develop on this trip so many years later...

Anne Leuck 7/23/08 Anne Leuck 7/23/08

Back from paradise

Rich and I took a long weekend trip out to see my brother and his wife in Washington State at their beautiful lakeside cabin in the mountains. We had a great time: lots of relaxation, amazing food and kayaking...!

My two favorite guys...next to my new favorite lake: Wenatchee

Rich found this fossilized rock on the beach...

I'm a big fan of the duo impromptu self shot photo...my brother Carl & I have been taking these for years...we have such a good time together if only we didn't live so far apart...

of course Rich managed to find the one musical instrument on the premises!

Kicking back, watching beautiful blue striped dragon flies..little did I know that a short time later I would be a crazy lady caught up in a paddling frenzy trying to escape a swarm of mosquitos!

Happy hiking family...Linda & Carl with my smiling canine nephew, Willy!

The offerings at the Plain "Farmer" Market...this was a fun joke as there is only one farmer at the Plain Farmer's Market. We enjoyed these beets and fuschia colored carrots for dinner...served up with a side of goat cheese. Yum. I had never seen carrots of this color before, the farmer said they were "speciated".

Anne Leuck 7/17/08 Anne Leuck 7/17/08

Dogs Rule Art

This was the secret project I blogged about the other day...I was asked by Jill Beninato of www.sitstaysmile.com to be part of a 'fat book' called 'Dogs Rule'. "Fat books" are small books of a certain size that contain pages created by a pre-determined group of artists. They are called fat books because the pages are often embellished with ephemera that make the final book fat when it is bound. Embellishment is optional... Since I was really stretched for time I couldn't take the risk of trying something new...instead I stuck with what I do best. That's Alice with my 14 pages...all original paintings on matte board, a lot of work but it was fun! There are 13 other amazing artists who will contribute, we each get a book filled with pages from one another and the 14th one will be auctioned off on ebay with the proceeds going to artist Bernie Berlin's charity A Place To Bark please visit her links to find out about the amazing work she is doing to save homeless pets, rehab them and find them homes (she is a remarkable human being and artist). Stay tuned for more info on the auction & finished books!