Tuesday, October 7, 2014

When it rains, it pours!

Greetings Everyone!

 My goodness things have been hopping here! There is so much good news to tell I don't quite know where to begin!

  I'll begin with announcing my new calendars with Amber Lotus. I can now officially announce that the calendars (there are TWO different ones this year from Greenspirit Arts !!!) are available online thru Amber Lotus' brand new website! And this year I am doubly excited because not only are they debuting a brand new Faerie Houses calendar, but they are also offering a whole calendar of my Environmental sculptures!

Here is the covers and a link to the webpage where you can order your calendars right from the publisher:
2015 Faerie Houses calendar:


2015 Land Art calendar:
https://www.amberlotus.com/sally-j-smith/#
If you are not yet familiar with Amber Lotus, they are the most wonderful publisher out of Portland Oregon. They publish gorgeous books, calendars, cards and all sorts of inspirational products to help enlighten and uplift. Additionally, they are very dedicated to environmentally conscious practices and work very hard to walk as softly upon the earth as possible as a company.... and they are the most wonderful folks to be working with! I am especially impressed with the layout and graphics on the calendar pages themselves. International Holidays are marked as are those of significant spiritual Holy-days. I could not be happier or more honored to be chosen by them to join their line of top-notch publications. Please do look around for their other items they have for sale, I'm sure you will be impressed and recognize many of the fellow artists who all get to call Amber Lotus "Home" !

   On to more good news! The reason I stepped away from keeping up with my blog was because I was interviewed for an article which has just appeared in the New York Times! You can read it HERE. Michael Tortorello did a wonderful job in this long and informative article. He found a fun way to lead readers into the world of Faerie house makers, and dreamers from all across the country. As is often the case, I get asked for some photographs to add to the project and it was so hard to narrow down the selection to just a mere 20! I am so pleased that they did choose a few of my images to put into their article and into the slideshow as well. I hope you get to read it soon. I don't know how long the Times makes its archived articles available so better not put it off if you are interested. Here is one image that I submitted that made it into the slideshow:

The interview was so much fun and Michael asked a lot of great questions. It is often hard for me to talk about my work because I don't knowwhat people want to know about the work, and in this case one doesn't have any control over what will get printed, so even though I felt nervous I tried to just relax and be myself and enjoy the conversation as if I was talking to an old friend. I enjoyed telling him about making houses in the woods that people then find. Here is an example of that sort of creation:
 There was a tremendous amount of territory to cover in his far-ranging piece but he does it creatively and with a lot of humor too.


  And remember the title of this post? That bit about it "pouring"? Well... there is more!  It turns out that on the very same day that the Times article came out, Mountain Lake PBS finally put the episode from their Roadside Adventure series on the web! You can watch that episode HERE.
   We shot the original piece a few years ago during the winter. It was a much smaller segment at that time but it got lots of good feedback when it aired. As a result (and because he's such an enthusiastic director/producer), Derek Muirden wanted to come back and do more filming in the summertime. So we did a second shooting a year and a half later! I had more Faerie houses to show/film and we had a great time working in short-sleeves instead of boots and parkas!
    I know I talked about it here in this blog when we finished the summer shoot and I had hoped Mt Lake PBS was going to make the show available online shortly after airing (which it did originally this spring) but there were some technical glitches and so there was a delay...a long one, but now at last it is up online! The fact that it aired the same day that the Times article came out is quite a synchronicity since I had NO control over the timing of either project! 
   If you enjoyed this video and want to help us out you can go HERE and write a review and give it some stars if you feel so moved. 

    So please feel free to share these links with your friends and I hope everyone enjoys the calendars, the Times article and the Roadside Adventures episode as much as I enjoyed being a part of their creation! And.... wait for it.... there is still more news to share, but I think that is quite enough for the moment! But stay tuned as I'll have some announcements to share about upcoming events!   

Have a lovely week Everyone!

3 comments:

claude said...

what a beautiful adventure

Anonymous said...

Dear Sally,
great news indeed.
I already got your new Faerie Houses calendar and it's really amazing!I particularly enjoyed the Roadside Adventure episode, I felt like I was there with you :-)
You live in such a wonderful place!
So peaceful and inspiring...
Thank you Sally for all your special artwork.
Marili

Unknown said...

Congratulations this is Awesome to hear :)

Welcome to the enchanted world of Environmental art and Faerie Houses sculptures created by Sally J Smith. Here you will find photos of the artist's unique art-forms and hear some of the stories from behind the scenes as she shares with you her creative process.