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Wednesday, April 03, 2019

by Diane Widler Wenzel: War on dust mites and household fumes

In the garage is a large stack of glass of many sizes. In the shop are three shelves of aluminum frames. In my studio a floor to ceiling metal shelf pantry organizer is stuffed with framed and unframed paintings and drawings some dating back to childhood - 60 years of painting. Many of the older works on cheap acidic paper smell not of mold or mildew. They have been well cared for but the smell of them and the entire studio makes my eyes itchy and the eyelids puffy. My guess dust mites?

This weeks purge is not the first time I have gone through my extensive collection and retired some keeping representative work. Almost every year I can part with a couple. At first the larger glass ones were taken apart. I took the glass to glass shops and cut down the glass for smaller frames. The last five years I have unframed almost all of my paintings under glass.  I just do not want to work with glass much longer. There are ways to paint large watercolor-like paintings covered with acrylic varnish so there is no need of glass.

The past three days I have three paintings from my collection only one is a drawing of one daughter when she was 11 years old upon her request. The other two are a watercolor by Shirley Hilts and the  first oil painting by granddaughter Melissa Edge. Yesterday afternoon I received a Fedex package containing four paintings from Dr. Donna Holdberg Kuttner. All seven are ready this morning to go to The Corvallis Caring Place Assisted Living.  They will hang in the upstairs South Hall where I exhibit my collection and other artist's collections. These are works not for sale. In return for sharing her work, I am giving Donna the framing. I am thrilled that my discarded frames and glass are going to good use.

Since I wrote the last blog about my search for a way to talk about politics that will bridge the widening political gap, I have lost my train of thought. If I ever had one. Next Wednesday Rain and I will put our friendship to the test by publishing our opposing opinions in a way that we think each of us can hear the other side.

4 comments:

Rain Trueax said...

Given the nutty comment we got recently, we might want to put off the politics for a week or so lol.

I don't even know what dust mites are but have you thought of writing a book using your art of a lifetime as illustrations? You'd have to choose significant ones that represented different periods. I think it'd be a good thing to offer, probably too expensive to have a lot of buyers but worthy of creating as a vision of an artist's life.

Diane Widler Wenzel said...

Thank you for your comment Rain. Flattered that you think a book is in order of my art. I thought of one of the self publishing books but when I saw one of my paintings from the Belize trip in one my daughter published through Costco I was dissapointed. I like the ones where I put small painting on a lazer printer and self publish far better.
Dust mites aremicroscopic bugs of several types that make dust of fabric and paper and cause allergies. There are pictures of the bugs on line.

thelma said...

I shall look forward to the opposing viewpoints, not that it will change the political scene but today the news says we have to watch what we say to each other if we are on opposing sides of the Brexit affair. The voting patterns in parliament are extraordinary, yesterday one amendment was equal votes, 310 on either side, the Speaker came in and voted with the noes. We need a new parliamentary system of course.

Rain Trueax said...

I've followed Brexit because I think it will impact our country also. The EU already does with the rules it can put in place that often politicians in the US then want to have also. We are an interconnected world whether we wish it or not.