LOST adventure - first batch of photos

Another month zooming by.    The Lodi Open Studio Tour is now in our past rather than our future.    I hope you were able to go to some of the venues - or all of them!    I went with a few friends, but we are older and didn't have the stamina to make the rounds.     Seems like we spent more time on the road going from one outlying venue to the next.    We saw some good art though and had a chance to visit with the artists.

We started at  Lisa Goldman's delightful studio in Woodbridge, where we saw, of all things, a mosaic piece done with an old toilet in the garden. It was really finely done and I'd love to have it in my eclectic garden.


 Next we drove to Acquiesce Winery in Acampo where Rich Allen, Lettie Nava and Mardie Driftmier were showing their work.     Let me tell you this was a perfectly beautiful day for an outing.    Blue skies, sunshine and a little breeze.      For those showing outside like Lettie and Rich, that little breeze could sneak in and topple paintings on small easels.     They each brought a quite a few pieces to show so we had a really good viewing.      And Rich was also working on the piece he had started at the Grape Festival.   He has a lot of hours into this piece now, and is close to finishing.     I didn't see Mardies' work as my eyes would  not adjust to the lighting changes.   I'm having eye issues.       I'm sure it was wonderful and I'm a great admirer of her personal painting style.     Here are Jean (our driver) and Frances at the winery.

Heading South, we planned to stop by the Woodbridge by Robert Mondave Winery, but somehow missed the road sign and missed the turn, so we didn't get to see Patti Wallace's work.  

We found ourselves on Victor Road, which turned out to be a good thing because we were now close to the Watt Winery where we saw Sandy Telle's work.  She had a wonderful room all to herself to show her work.    From paintings to fabric art, mixed media pieces and some fiber arts, she had a good display set up and used her space well.    The winery has an interesting garden and we spent some time poking around outside too.  

 This is Sandy and Jean.

Sometimes I don't know where to look.    Artistic gardens are such a love of mine, I am torn between looking at the art, and looking at the garden.    I could not believe there was a lovely yellow iris in bloom in October.     Mine bloomed early summer.     I wonder how this happened?      Then there was this wonderful view of Mexican Sage through the fronds of the palm tree.    I could have spent all day enjoying the garden.

One piece of interesting garden art was the cleverly constructed raft/ship made of wine barrels.   How clever.   How appropriate.  How delightful.    

Then we piled back into the car again for another turn Southward to Harney Lane.   At this point we all joked about popping in on Sam Bassett and Pepe Poole at Samba Studio.    They did not do the art hop this year and we missed them, but decided it would just be too rude to show up on their doorstep when we were not invited.     LOL    So we turned South and wound around til we arrived at the studio of JC Strote.    JC and her fellow artists, Linda Osborne and Glenda Burns had converted her garage/studio workspace into a gallery, filled with their creations.    With JC's beautiful glass works, Linda's potter and garden art, and Glenda's pottery scarves, beautiful large acrylic paintings and ceramic tiles - it was like eye candy to an art lover.     I can't imagine how much time and energy it took to arrange everything and set up the displays.    If only there had been a crowd of shopper/lookers, it would have been even better.    For some reason, perhaps it was the overwhelming amount of art to look at, I forgot to take any pictures.    Sorry.  

Back in the car again we headed Southward one more time - our plan was to make this big circle ending back closer to Stockton and our homes.      This time Morada was our destination - Caroline Henry's house.     We wandered through the gate into the back yard where there were paintings on display on chairs and perched here and there, then to the studio, where Caroline greeted us.     Elizabeth Parrish was also showing her work there.  So we saw their charming watercolors, acrylic paintings, and Elizabeth's artistic digitally enhanced photography.      It was a nice way to end the day of exploration and friendships.    This is Caroline in her studio.

I hear the other artist venues were wonderful too and wish I could have made the rounds.   If anyone has any photos of them they'd like to show here, just email me with jpegs and I'll be able to post them.   Or if you'd like to share the experience the visits you made to them, email those to me too.     I'd like this to be a place we can get together and share.  

I hope you liked riding along with us on our little day of art adventure.