Eyes Void of Hope

I've been experimenting with textures in my aquatints and the results can be surprising and interesting. I used a burlap texture for this subject, a cow who spends her days with her head locked in bars that do not allow her to turn around, move very much at all. Her eyes are truly void of any hope, or light, or anything beyond her misery.

UPDATE: For a good article on the plight of farm animals in the U.S. look at this in The Atlantic.

Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony with the Mayor

We had a great day at Brown Street Studios. The Mayor of Peekskill, Mary Foster, officiated the ribbon-cutting ceremony for our new building sign. The pic above is of John Ford (the building owner) and me cutting the ribbon. Mayor Foster is on the left and the people surrounding us are mostly the rest of the artists at Brown Street Studios.

After the ceremony, we invited everyone up for a tour of our studios and had the studios open to the public for the rest of the day. We had a steady flow of people come through and the day was very successful.

I spent most of Friday cleaning up my studio and so my husband, Rocky, decide to document "the clean" by taking pictures. This is about as clean as my studio has been in a long time: