Celebration of Fine Art

Things are in high gear here at our office in Scottsdale as we are preparing for our 2011 show! We are thrilled with the line up of artists for the upcoming year. Each year we are humbled by the applications that we receive from so many wonderful artists. Please be sure to look at the “Meet the Artists” section to get a sneak preview of the 2011 collection.

We enjoyed a visit to The Grove in Los Angeles, CA with our Scottsdale Convention and Visitor’s Bureau on October 23, where we were joined by artists Robin Branham, Randy Berkeley and Douglas Tharalson. In the pictures above you see Douglas Tharalson talking with a visitor at The Grove. At the top of the page you see Robin sharing her inspiration with a young artist in the making with a sculpture of Randy’s in the back ground. We set up a mini “Celebration” and invited visitors of The Grove to come to Scottsdale and enjoy the Celebration of Fine Art and other great Scottsdale events like all of our classic car auctions that happen in January! It was a fun opportunity to get out and promote what we love to new people. We even met a few people who were from Scottsdale while we were there! It was a beautiful day in LA!

We are happy to share that we have been selected as a finalist for the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce prestigious Sterling Award for business excellence. It is a great honor to be considered as a finalist for this award, so we already feel like a winner. We’ll find out on November 16 who the Sterling Award recipients are in all four catagories. You can visit www.scottsdalechamber.com/sterling to read more about it. We are very proud to represent our incredible team of employees and the great artists who make the Celebration of Fine Art worthy of this consideration.

We look forward to having you join us for our 2011 Event! Mark your calendars for January 15 through March 27, 2011! The artists are hard at work preparing their best pieces for you! See you soon!

It’s not entirely unheard of for an artist or a craftsperson to change direction mid-career and move from one mode of artistic express to another. What’s perhaps most interesting about Whitney is that she not only changed direction; she added a dimension.

Whitney, a native of Rochester, New York for 30 years pursued the fine art of tapestry weaving a two-dimensional medium of color and pattern. When she first came to the Celebration of Fine Art, she found that her weaving loom would take up too much room in her studio and had to be left at home. As these are working studios for the artists, she could not work or demonstrate how she created her gorgeous tapestries.

In 1990, she decided a change was necessary, not only for her aching back but it was time to find a new interest. A weekend artists’ retreat introduced her to painting on gourds. Whitney recalls, “I saw the possibilities in the natural, organic shape of the gourds. The first one I studied, for instance, suggested a woman. She just appeared to me.” Better yet, gourds, paints, brushes and carving tools were portable.

Whitney moved from the two-dimensional world of weaving to the three-dimensional world of the often tall and shapely Zucca gourds she still buys from a grower in southern California.

Finding that she could work out her creative ideas much faster on a gourd than in tapestry weaving, she sold all of her weaving equipment and supplies and moved virtually full time to gourds and started doing more paintings. Whitney says, “The gourds, for me, have always fallen into the decorative arts category. While the paintings cross over from decorative arts into a psychological space, so I tend to be more experimental – more abstract with the paintings.”

Spend a few moments with Whitney at the 2011 Celebration of Fine Art and be inspired by her view of the world. You can meet her from January 15 through March 27, 2011 under the big white tents.