The NSA Spring Art show was rewarding when my largest watercolor to date-The Elephant and Cheetah Waterhole-took a first place and my second scratchboard Curiosity, African Wild Dog took a first in Drawing.
In March that win was followed by an award in the Houston Visual Arts Alliance Show with my complicated ink piece, Durer's Dream getting a check and news coverage.
SPRING BREAK was amazing, taking a break from teaching and art to travel to Dana Point California with Gayln on a photographic animal journey in search of whales and dolphins and other Pacific coast wildlife. The highlight of our trip was being surrounded daily by pods of over 400 common dolphins!
Coming home that next week I was the judge of the North West Art League and it was the best art show of the year, with so much incredible talent. The hardest show yet to judge because of such high caliber work. I was very impressed with the amazing pieces there.
The Spring of 2018 also was great for our art because were made it into the select pool of Houston Min Mural artists and I look forward to where that leads. Later that month the Texas City Art Fest was a big disappointment with the best of show winner -a small photograph and i'm never going to be happy with photography beating fine art in any art show.
The next weekend Gayln and I were nature guides for Canadians in search of birds during Galveston's Featherfest and we exhausted ourselves in finding them as many species as possible all over this gulf coast region.
My students attended the State Visual Arts event and took 2 out of 3 Gold medals and discovered so many new things of the Texas Hill country, Pedernales Falls, Enchanted Rock, Wimberley and San Marcos.
The next month Galyn and I traveled to Marble Falls for the Paint the Town Festival where I was the guest speaker at Marble Falls High School and I found my new friend-the Pronghorn antelope mount, his name is "Birdie". We also hiked the Balcones Canyonlands and got a lifer for my bird list, Golden Cheeked Warblers.
Last week our spring started to wind up as summer approaches with my wild night as Event speaker at the Houston Audubon Society in Houston. Abigail and Paola did a wonderful job as my assistants and I donated my Aplomado Falcon painting to the Houston Audubon Society.
My students High School graduation is next week and in June we are hosting the Hiser Wildlife Safari Kenya 2018, bringing my art students to Africa on safari for their very first time. That last year and a half of fundraising for this trip was a herculean undertaking mixed in with all of the things I am involved in -not to mention teaching art each day, but now the payoff and it will be so rewarding to watch my students fall in love with Africa.
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