In getting organized for the week after a long weekend, this was so nice to find in my email from the end of the week I had to post it here right away. Thanks, Sandi!

“John Hiemstra was the co-creator of the “Business of Art Scholarship”…something ArtWalk had hoped to do for 5 years, but John’s enthusiasm for the project made it a reality.

Working with sponsor The Frame Maker, John took our SDSU scholarship winner under his wing and not only helped her create a booth display for the event, he packed the equivalent of ten years of real-life experience into two months of incredible mentoring.

Jessica Siemens, the scholarship winner, was privy to advice, information and perspective that professional artists acquire in a lifetime.

The entire experience was inspiring, and we look forward to providing the scholarship on an annual basis. It would not be possible without John’s passionate involvement.”

…

Link to my original post: Nice Note from Sandi Cottrell of ArtWalk on the Business of Art Scholarship Project

I’ve really gotten busy now building this new design business here in Pittsburgh, with holidays approaching for kids, end-of-year deadlines, all that, but I’m going to take a little more time out of that to write a bit about my mentor Franco Colavecchia, who is retiring from teaching this week after his latest 15 year tenure at North Carolina School of the Arts, where we met in 1998.

If you follow my blog or see my updates on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you might have noticed some recent “Archive” updates to my custom art portfolio here mentioning Franco and with pictures of design and painting projects I did under his tutelage.

One of the things I love most about Franco and our friendship over the years since NCSA, is that he and I share an un-self-conscious devotion to the work itself above most other things and a drive to get on with the next big thing(s) on our respective idea boards. By fortunate coincidence, Franco started teaching an annual seminar at the University of San Diego at about the same time Heather and I moved to San Diego in 1999, so our conversation about painting has deepened over periodic dinners in downtown or La Jolla or Los Angeles, from teacher to student to fellow professionals in the arts to fellow teachers.

So another thing I’m extremely grateful for this holiday season is my long association with Franco, and everything I’ve learned from him, that he now has a terrific home and studio in Providence to get on with the paintings next up in his mind’s eye, and that he has the health, vigor and enthusiasm to pursue them, so --

Congratulatiuons, Franco!

You can find out more about Franco’s career here and sign his congratulations card here, and for eye candy today a slideshow of pictures from the San Diego opening of “SOHO Memory Paintings”, a show of Franco’s paintings I put together in the summer of 2009 before our move to Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh, to be honest, has turned out to be a very rich place and robust place to put down business roots in a generally cold and uncertain business environment and at almost exactly one year to date of my arrival here fresh from the San Diego cityscape mural project, I feel like those roots are somewhat settled in for some real growth now.
 
Today, I’m actually balancing two different demands from two different businesses that are both my own, and the demands are mostly for new work in new opportunities on top of current obligations, both consulting and painting.
 
What I’ve come to realize (among other things) is that the two endeavors are more similar than is obvious, given the project design and production sequence and skills involved in custom service.
 
It is of course, truly wonderful to have appreciative and serious demand for your services as an independent business in this day and age, and as biz grows and work distribution shifts to larger team (coming soon, I believe) I’m looking forward to doing more kinds of stuff that’s had to wait in the life remodel of the last 18 months.
 
Near the top of my list is to edit and release literally tons of video and photos of some more cool San Diego custom art/contracting projects to satisfy that business itch, and in the anticipation I realized I had never shared this faux finish video I made back in 2007. A reasonably successful marketing experiment with 12,000 page views on last three years and consistent traffic drip to my main site with little to no help from me-- this is first time in either painting blog, website or other social media (I just posted tonight on my Facebook page, too.)
 
So check it out and just ignore the outdated titles for now-- I just made a new set for new video project on the way soon.

Its been crazy busy as the snow continues to fall here in Pittsburgh.
 
Since we’re moving this month into our new house, we have
two houses to shovel and the typical delays accompanying a total of
some 30″ of snow in the last two weeks:

 
work that needs done,
stuff to be hauled away, stuff to be moved in, all waiting,
with the rest of this somewhat unprepared
small city, for a the roads to get better, the snow to stop falling,
a break in the action somehow so I can get on with what
I have to do.
 
Now the bright side is that what I have been able to do
waiting for the world to dig itself out is paint--
well, prep for painting and paint, taking a poor condition
second floor and making it sealed, clean and safe for us to sleep in.
 
People who’ve worked with me know I actually do get excited about an excellent
prep job, and I’m proud to say that given time alotted (actually scraped somewhat painfully from the childcare schedule),
and poor conditions we started with, the repaired and fresh walls and ceiling have really came out great.
 
so I’ll be posting some iPhone pix of progress sequence here next, but I want to
give a shout out to one of my favorite products here that just got written up in the
almighty New York Times.
 
I’ve already been using the brilliant, zero-VOC Transitional Primer from AFM Safecoat on
what I call “welding” all the different surfaces together into a decent “canvas” on which to paint, in this case:
 

• previously painted drywall
• previously painted plaster
• previously painted pine/waterbased
• previously painted pine/leadbased/
• raw poplar
• raw pine
• lots of acrylic caulking
• fresh drywall
• fresh mud
• waterbased catalyzed resin

AFM Safecoat paints are completely green, non-toxic products, and as the article points out, even smell good out of the can. They do a whole line of interior paints, and also a line of all-natural wood finishes that I’ve used extensively on custom hardwood picture frames the past few years in San Diego.
 
Highly recommended from personal experience and will be generally available in Pittsburgh soon.
 

I’ve never taken one of my finished paintings apart before-- stretched, folded, rolled, shipped, framed, unframed, cut off the bars, glued down, all of these violences I have done to my creations but this was a new one on me. Preparing the vertical blinds as blinds after completing the painting was kind of anticlimactic as an artist, though essential as a craftsperson and makes for some unique pictures.

first round of blind preparation

vertical blinds on the table

the wicked surface

This last picture shows pretty well the second and third levels of hell, I mean challenge, of painting the vertical blind surface with a coherent image (and not just an abstracted pattern). Not only was this mural painted on 122 overlapping “pieces” which have to line up properly for the image to be clear, but each piece is machined with 1/8″ vertical grooves and extruded from plastic to boot. Prep, paint adhesion and just trying to put down a straight, beautiful line (or a thousand of them, we are talking about drawing architecture here) were all special cases requiring more thought and attention than usual.

I waded through some more photos of the mural project this morning here in Las Vegas hotel room before hitting the road again and found some fun detail shots that give a good idea of both how much detail I actually put in this mural and how much extra attention was required to make clean beautiful marks on this challenging surface ( I have some more technical type pics on the blinds themselves that I’ll write about when I’m ready to relive that part-- for now, I’d rather concentrate on the finished product, which makes the painting process look relatively easy and painles!)

San Diego federal buildings on left mural panel

Hyatt buildings with Coronado Island and Bridge behind

Electra residential building with Pt.Loma & Coronado in the background, as well as one of all time favorite sky painting moments

Broadway with NBC and AT&T buildings on the left mural panel

.. now its time to get to the real business at hand!

This sample is on board approximately 30″ x 40″ using the full scale drawing prepared for the final surface. The colors are close to the desired goal- I’ll be making a few adjustments- and the style and atmosphere of the painting right on!

More dramatic pictures of full scale process coming soon!

In all the rush of the decision to move and the finishing of San Diego projects and commitments, I forgot to post any pictures of the show of my sky paintings that continues at Joe Bedford’s Coalesce Gallery on India Street in Little Italy.

Paintings by John Hiemstra, furniture by Joe Bedford

John Hiemstra and Joe Bedford at Coalesce Gallery, Little Italy

• RT @johnlacey I love watching people make stuff. It doesn't matter what it is. Pottery, dance music, a painting, a birdbath. Fascinating. #
• way to go! @karensloan Received a great commission for a large painting today. Can breath a little easier now ; ) #
• so true @bananica15 I've been doing so much painting lately, but the plate I mix the colors on looks the coolest of all. Go figure. #
• also, wife @sdmetalsmith posted Twitter-only specials on her hand forged #jewelry http://bit.ly/xS4T4 as part of our studio-moving…. #
• thnx @gewinnerin @_inmarket @PatriceErickson @Pesamob and @dmq26 for recent kindness- follow these people please, they are too kind! #