Woodbury Fall Arts Fest

 

http://fallartsfest.blogspot.com/

 

 

I'm so excited to be participating in the Woodbury, NJ Fall Arts Fest on September 29th from 11-6 pm.  The location looks beautiful and the music and vendors will be amazing.

 

 

I've been busy getting prints made and framing new images taken at Bartram's Farm, the Spring Gardens Community Garden and the Ambler Arboretum.  As a grad student at Ambler, I get to walk the grounds in every season so I began photographing the woodlands and formal gardens with my square format camera during breaks in classes.  It's a beautiful setting to study in.

 

 

 Philadelphia, Bridge

 Spring Gardens Community Garden, Lamb's Ear

 

Dingman's Ferry, Fern Forest Floor

 



 Bordentown, NJ

 

 Smithville, NJ

 

 New Garden, Cucumbers

 

Burlington County Farm Show

 

 One of my new clay pieces                          New terrarium creations

 

Lots of local trips to farms and small towns, as well as camping and hiking will influence my booth, as well as the terrarium making we are engaged in for my Forest Ecology class. I also worked in a clay studio again this summer and some of my newest pieces may make an appearance at my table as well. 

 

And as halloween is getting closer, I'll be selling photo cards I made using pictures I took in Charleston and here in my neighborhood near Girard Ave.

Philadelphia Flower Show Temple Ambler Wins Best In Show

Today was the first day of the Flower Show for the general public and I worked the first shift at the Temple Ambler display, Aloha Aina: A Return to Life with the Land

 I was excited to see the display after watching the students build the displays and grow the plants, forcing the trees to flower in the green house and packing all the supplies in the box truck to bring to the show, not to mention building the display at the Convention Center for a week.

So I was really proud to see they won Best in Show Academic Education and Best Acheivement: Incorporating Food, Water, Shelter and Food into a Natural Landscape.

Happy Garden Cards to Die For

I found a set of these cards in a high school classroom I was visiting and had to have them, so I searched Etsy, only finding partial sets until I spotted this one at Bright Wall Studios.  These awesome retro cards has plants and tips on growing them but the surprise is all of the gardening advice from canning, pickling, making terrariums, designing medicinal herb beds and Ready Made-style building projects from outdoor tables, benches, window boxes and kids garden projects. The indoor gardens section is a trip back in time to when folks filled their houses with plants and had stands with grow lights and incorporated plants into their interior designs. It's amazing how relevant the whole set is and how much more plant saturated people's lives were back in the day. I'm in OCD Garden heaven.

Philly Bikes, Reading Terminal Market

I'm going to start posting my newest Bikes of Philly photographs today and throughout the week. I'm leading up to my bike photo show at Fairmount Bicycles on Sunday April 17th from 2-6 pm, for the Arts Crawl in Fairmount. They are at 2014 Fairmount Ave. I'm also showing across the street at Wellpoint Oriental Medicine!

I decided to offer a free print if one of these bikes belongs to you! So far only one person contacted me about their Bike Love bicycles in Northern Liberties.

Check them out and tell me what you think. http://www.etsy.com/shop/allisonostertag

Philly Flower Show

Matisse-themed garden

Walk Into The Woods Opening Night

Upcoming Show: Space Planning

I'm currently showing work at Wellpoint Oriental Medicine in Fairmount in Philadelphia (2014 Fairmount Ave.) in an evolving show over the month. I had to move some work in to keep the walls from being empty as another artist moved out, but I only had the work sitting around my house to put up on short notice.

Starting next month, date TBA, I'll hang work in the waiting area, hallway and a second room that doors treatment doors open up to face. The space appealed to me because the eastern medicine, acupuncture and massage connects well with my nature photography and environmental conservation interest. It led me to start thinking about Feng Shui when I was hanging the nine pieces currently in the waiting room (the flowing water photo should flow into the building, not send energy out).

I wish I had more training in wall placement and creative show hanging. It's always a struggle to hang shows myself and feel like I did something to make the work more dynamic and not just static dots on the wall. Anyone teach a class in show hanging?

Come check out the results as they change from what I already hung in the space to the new pieces that go up in early November!

Weekend Garden Project

Today I finally got to this project, making a marker for my bed in the community garden, so I can be friendly with my neighbors who ask where is your bed? And this makes it easy to see. It reminds me of houses at the shore that have the cute names and signs.

I found a cement remnant in our rock pile that was about 8" tall and 6" across, cleaned the surface with a rag, and applied a layer of white acrylic paint, then went back over the edges with more white. I mixed blue, green and white together and painted a graduated fade from top to bottom.

The letters were harder to paint, so I painted the letters, then outlined them with a slightly darker green, then went back over the interior of each letter. I thinned out the paint to paint the flowers and it was much easier to work with. My garden has a huge lavender plant, so I wanted to make sure that was featured on my sign.

I dug a shallow trench for the bottom and back filled dirt behind the stone and stepped on it to firm it up so the rock doesn't fall over. You can see there's not much happening in the garden in terms of growth, so this is a bright happy reminder that all will be colorful again!

Window Boxes and Sidewalk Planters

Window boxes around the neighborhood:

And planters on the sidewalk: