October Receptions and Events - Coming up: Ontario Festival of the Arts 10/19

October has always been one of my favorite and busiest months, ever since I can remember. We are in the midst of my favorite time of the year, which is September through January. I'm so excited by all the fun events, anniversaries, vacations, holidays, birthdays, the abundance of time we get to spend with our family and friends, all the decorations and, of course, the food! Mr. Gold also loves this season too since we get to decorate and his absolute favorite time of the year is Christmas when we bring out the tree.

We finished decorating for Halloween. Our best friends' mom gave them all of her Halloween decorations and since they already have a lot, they passed some onto us, including the cat costumes. It was like a treasure hunt searching through the bin for decorations. We ended up with a lot of cute cats and skeletons, most of which we put on Mr. Gold's cat house.


Ontario Festival of the Arts - Saturday, October 19, 2019

It's finally here! This Saturday is the Ontario Festival of the Arts. This free community event runs from 11:00am-7:00pm in downtown Ontario at 217 S. Euclid Ave. It will be a day celebrating arts, music, performing arts, historic tours, adult learning activities, food trucks and beer!

Tom and I are both participating with our own booths (which will be located next to each other). I won't know the exact location until the day of the event. To stay updated follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Map for the 2019 Ontario Festival of the Arts. The layout is a little different this year, the food and beer will be towards the back. Also since the event is a month later the weather will be nicer, in the high 70's. 


Our Museum Week: Two Exhibits in the Ontario Arts District

This last week was an arts filled week! Last weekend were the two exhibit receptions, for Day of the Dead and WEPO. On Saturday we went to the Ontario Museum for the Day of the Dead exhibit reception which has become one of my favorite shows (cutting it very close with the Ontario Open!) This show has such a diverse variety of artwork from traditional media such as paintings, drawings to sculpture and some very experimental work. On Sunday we were at the Chaffey Community Museum of Art (CCMA) for the first biennial West End Photo Open, where Tom won third place for his Zebra! We are so excited because this means he will be invited to exhibit at the 2020 West End Photo Invitational next year! We don't know the exact dates yet but they told us it will be sometime in the fall. Steve Thomas, the exhibit organizer told us this is going to be a new venue for photographers to enter every second year, similar to how the Ontario Museum does the Ontario Open every other year.

Standing next to my Day of the Dead girl drawing, which recently turned 8 years old! The Ontario Museum store still has some t-shirts in stock. Members get 10% discount for anything in the store.

Photos from WEPO at CCMA. Tom took the photo of the zebra during our honeymoon/vacation last year at Safari West. Top right photo - my cousin, myself, Tom and my sister/cat nanny. Bottom left - Tom and Steve Thomas, the exhibit mastermind and organizer. Bottom right - Nancy DeDiemar, CCMA Chair, Board of Directors announcing all the artists and exhibits for the month. WEPO will be on display through November 9.

Some of the 3D art, installations and altars during on display at the Ontario Museum. The exhibit runs until November 10 and will be open all day during the Festival. Bottom left - a paper mâché sculpture. Bottom right - installation made of Zote soaps by Pamela Aliaga, my old friend and classmate from Chaffey College. We exhibited together during the 2009 Student Invitational. 

This is probably my favorite piece in the exhibit! Its paper mâché. Look at all the details!

Some of my favorite 2D pieces. Top right - pyrography, the artist made this drawing out of fire using a torch! I love this experimental media.

On Tuesday we attended the Ontario Museum's Building Community: Celebrating our Past and Creating our Future strategic planning dinner at the senior center. We went with open minds not knowing what to expect and the forum ended up being so much fun! There were so many people there from the community - artists, volunteers, museum staff, city staff and representatives, board members, local organizations, youth - all gathered there because we love the Ontario Museum and the surrounding art community. The purpose of this meeting was to brainstorm and share ideas how we can push the museum forward to reach more people. How we can make it better. It was amazing seeing so many people gathered in one place for the same purpose.

We got the invitation in the mail but I missed the RSVP deadline since I was working in Anaheim that week. Luckily John Worden the museum director added us to the guest list and even gave me a job onsite as a table leader/facilitator. I got to present our ideas on behalf of my table. There was so much food leftover they told us to take some home 😋


Preparing for the Ontario Festival of the Arts

We have less than a week to go before the festival. Last year our wonderful booth sponsor The Arts Area paid our booth fee and even loaned us some grid walls to hang the artwork on. We were (and still are) so grateful as participating in a festival can get expensive very fast. There are a lot of start-up costs associated with being a vendor at an event - from getting a table (luckily the booth fee pays for this), to ordering business cards and marketing materials (I ordered 500 last year and surprise! I got married and changed my name, website, etc. so I had to get new ones again.) This year since we were paying for two booth fees and ordering prints for both of our booths, we decided to try a more economical route for the art display panels. I had my brother build us some easel panels out of inexpensive pegboard. My brother is amazing at carpentry and has a side business where he builds custom wood project for clients, most of which are pet houses. These turned out way better than we imagined!

These will fold into the frame of the panel using a minimal amount of space. They will fit in the trunk or back seat of my car. My brother has kindly offered to deliver them onsite to us the day of the festival since he lives nearby. We are going to use these for other events as well. 

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