Blue skies and sunshine ended on Friday night and thunder, lightening, and pouring rain began. Loud cracking and steady drumming sounds kept me awake long into the time when I needed to be sleeping. I have to admit, I was concerned that the rain would be unrelentless and would deter guests from attending my Saturday night vernissage (opening reception) at the Cultur’Cafe. I couldn’t believe my poor luck.

But Saturday, although not the beautiful clear, warm day I had hoped for, was simply cloudy with a drizzle here and there. There was no rain while we were hauling the works in and out of the car, and no rain during the vernissage itself. I am grateful and feel lucky once again. I am pleased with the turnout, twenty five or so people, some that I already knew, some that I met for the first time. One lovely thing is how attentive everyone was to the work, looking at it intently and interested in discussing it and asking questions and telling me their thoughts and feelings about it. There were enough English/French translators to keep us all from dividing into two nonmixing camps, thank goodness. All made an effort to span the language gap.

There was one very serendipitous occurence that was rather delightful. A woman introduced herself to me, Catherine, and said she, too, is an artist. She recently bought a book on acrylic techniques, particularly liked one of the works she saw in it, and googled the name to find out more. It was one of mine. The information she found on the internet included the announcement of this exhibit at the Cultur’Cafe in Ozolles and she couldn’t believe it – she lives not far from here! So she came to meet me. It turns out that she and Margaret, upon meeting each other at the vernissage, realized that they had met before! Now Margaret and I plan to visit Catherine’s studio sometime this week. All three of us are amazed at the coincidences that brought us together.

A second interesting circle of relationships occured. Margaret invited her friend, Gaby, to the vernissage (and I must particularly thank Gaby for driving an hour to attend!). Gaby is a doctor who does some interesting and amazing work with patients with handicaps that require prosthesis and physical retraining and she collects Margaret’s work. Gaby is also an artist in her own right, and works in various media with a variety of subjects, one favorite being life drawing. Margaret and Gaby have taken classes from the same art teacher here in France, and Gaby bought one of my works to give as a gift to this art teacher. So, how do I put this?: the work of one artist/teacher being introduced to another artist/teacher through students who are also artists and art collectors. Definitely a serendipitous circle, but a difficult one to describe.

I never see sales as the measure of success of an exhibit or of an artist’s work, but I am still pleased to say that I have sold 5 works. Gaby bought “Should Have Seen,” Manne & Pierre bought “Another Sort,” Ken & Margaret bought “I Saw Them” and “Just One Bit,” and Raymonde (a former mayor of Ozolles) bought “Couldn’t Be Measured.” And the exhibit has just begun. I am very pleased.

I want to say a special thanks to Elisa, who stopped by to visit while we were hanging and made a very key suggestion that truly improved the look of the exhibit as a whole. I am also very appreciative of all who attended – I enjoyed many really interesting conversations – with Manne & Pierre, with Marie-Helene, with Chris and his two sons, with Daniele and Fabienne and Camam. And thank you to those who attended but who I couldn’t converse with because my elementary French just wasn’t enough.

And the running gag of the photo foot fetish continues. Hope it gives you a smile. Au revoir et a bientot.