FIRST FRIDAY, February, 2010

Last October, four women joined me at our home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a creative retreat. For a week we made art---painting, writing, drawing. We worked at the villa, at the beach, on the beautiful Malecon, and in coffee shops, trying to meld our individual styles and visions with the lively, colorful culture of Mexico. We viewed local art at the weekly gallery openings and visited with the artists. We hired the neighbors to model for us and painted together on the veranda. At the end of the day we had a glass of wine, cooked local foods, ate in local restaurants and enjoyed meals that neighbors prepared for us . It was a time of great energy---and we all returned home with much accomplished.

We decided to exhibit our work together and the exhibit is on display through February at the Mass Ave Wine Shoppe in Indianapolis. It's a lively show with lots of color and styles and subjects set against the dark walls of the Mass Ave Wine Shoppe exhibition space. As we all used the same models and had the same view from the villa, it's fun to see the different visions and styles come through. While we could not convince our Creative Retreat writer, Susan Guyett, to display her writings from PV, we thank her for writing and distributing our press release with such professionalism and for arranging for some of us to be interviewed by Travis DiNicola on the radio show, "The Art of the Matter", which aired on the local NPR affiliate, WFYI on Friday, February 5th at 8 p.m. and again, Saturday, February 6th at 4 p.m.

Our exhibit invitation is designed by Sara Love.

I hope you will stop by the Mass Ave Wine Shoppe before the end of the month and see the work. I am happy to meet you there, show you the exhibit and talk about the joys and challenges of our experiences -- making art while living in another culture.