Yesterday KALEID celebrated the 4th year of it’s very temporary existence on the 4th Street in San Jose. I think we had fewer people than last year, but the party was very nice nonetheless. I didn’t see most of the artists since last December, and talking to them again was a real pleasure. Funny how we forget names but remember each others’ faces 🙂

Since we came early, I could take a good look at the Rockin’ Stockings art show. Each artist’s works were hung together, and stockings with artist names were painted on the wall under them. Very cute 🙂

Also, found an artist I don’t think I saw before: Megan M. Eckman of Studio M.M.E.. She has wonderful pen and ink illustrations in KALEID. There was another artist whose work looks like illustrations, all with unusual perspectives, but there was no name anywhere on the display. I know that there was an article about her (or him?) some time ago in the Phantom Galleries blog, but of course now I can’t find it. Why, oh why do artists make it difficult to locate their name?

The best part of the evening was of course the gift exchange. All gifts were unwrapped on the spot, so that we all could see what it was and who created each piece.

I finally ventured into the land of collages with my gift, but since I could not find about half of the paper I knew I had, the result was not exactly what I originally planned. Not sure if the original idea would survive anyway since paper was not tearing predictably and there was no telling up front how a particular type of paper would take colored pencil.

It was fun working on the collage anyway, and Keith Bunnell seemed to be happy with it. Keith is a Raku artist whose beautifully shaped and glazed mug I picked earlier that evening from under the Christmas tree.

Gift exchange is a random process, and Cherry even shuffled the gifts to make sure no one could tell which gift was brought by which artist. Keith and me were the only two who picked each others’ creations.

Flashes of memories – torn paper collage, 5″ x 7″

Raku mug by Keith Bunnell. You can’t tell it from the photo, but the mug is just as beautiful inside with random spots of black and dark earthy colors.