Grace and a Dancer in a Red Dress

When we returned home from our trip to Charlotte, there was an e-mail waiting for me from the South Carolina State Fair apprising me of two more small art awards - one for a mosaic mask and the other for an oil painting, "Forward Leap." The painting, "Forward Leap," features Zenaida Broom dancing with her figure repeated again in the back round crowd. It was painted spontaneously, the forms somewhat amorphous. I tried to capture in the gestural paint strokes, that incorporeal feeling of people in motion as they dance.
With these two more awards, I had a total of five. But the biggest challenge, and the greatest reward was yet to come.

Grace and a Fallen Man

To continue on my previous blogs about fortuitous small awards, I took my cash awards from a county fair and put them towards a trip to Charlotte to see the opening of "The War Against Peace" at the Ciel Gallery. I had participated in this event with two mosaics "Fallen Floyd" and "Kneeling Woman, Widow." When we arrived at the Gallery, I was surprised to learn that one of my mosaics, "Fallen Floyd" won the Best of Show Award. The exhibition at the Ciel was small but noteworthy, with mixed media work on the ambitious theme of war coming from all corners of the country, as well as one art work from Canada. Since my participation in this event was largely due to the grace of the curator, who told me about the exhibition personally and encouraged me to submit my work, I had yet another reason for gratitude.

The following morning, we woke up to the loud blaring of loudspeakers in the square outside our hotel. It turned out to be a rally for breast cancer research. I went down to the rally in the early hours and was handed packages of free gifts and treated to a free massage for being a breast cancer survivor. One more town and another armload of gratuities.