Art is for Everyone

A new little restaurant called Amicis opened in our city (Kettering, Ohio) a couple months ago. One of their commitments is to feature a local artist's work each month. They get fun stuff on their walls, and they also get to help out artists in the area who want to show or sell their work. I offered up Zentangle, and they said, 'cool!'
   I had a few large Zentangle inspired pieces, and lots of actual Zentangle tiles (LOTS of those). Most of my larger items were already framed, but the smaller pieces were not. Framing is expensive, and it's really hard to find nice frames that will fit a Zentangle tile. So I asked my friend and framer, Dave Crowell (Framin' Dave as we like to call him) to help me out. We worked out a deal where he made frames from his short pieces, and I agreed to just buy whatever he made.  I loved the idea of getting a bunch of random frames to play with. And because Dave knows all about what Zentangle is, I trusted that he would give me frames that would work. What fun it was to pick up boxes of these babies and then match them up with my little army of Zentangle tiles! I framed about 40 of the tiles altogether. Not all of them are in the show, but most are.

   As many of you know, I borrowed Laura Harms' Zentangle Challenge one week and asked participants to send me their challenge tiles. I wanted to feature these as part of the show. I thought the best way to show what Zentangle is (in my mind, it is art for everyone!) would be to show the beauty and diversity in lots of different tiles done by lots of different people. You all were amazing!! I received 60 tiles from people all over the world! It was a thrill to get the mail every day- so many beautiful tiles! I had seen many of them already online, and to see them in 'real life' was like I was meeting the person who created it, and feeling them with me. Putting them all together was like the online Zentangle community coming to life right before me. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your beautiful contributions.
      To display this lovely community of tiles, I found a slide-in frame strip that is used for displaying 4x6 photos. They were inexpensive and each 18" strip held 5 tiles very nicely, although I did have to cut them and reposition them to hold the 3.5" tiles.

As for what will happen to the tiles you all sent, we decided that if people wanted to buy one, they could easily take it off the strip, and we will donate the proceeds to the local art non-profit, We Care Arts, who help disabled persons discover and use their potential through learning art skills. Once a tile has been sold, we slip a thank you tile in its place with the donor's name on it.

Thank you all again for helping me illustrate the beauty and fun of Zentangle. As far as I'm concerned, even though the show has only been up since Tuesday, it's already a success because of its spirit and your participation. I feel all of you there, and I am grateful for that. Anything else that comes from it would be icing on an already yummy cake! (I did sell 4 pieces on the night of the reception -- woo hoo!)