Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who came out to the AS IS Sneak Peak on Friday night!!! Apparently, The Dunes had a record number of guests! My apologies to anyone who was turned away at the door.

Portraits are hung. Young Rapids run a sound check

 It was fantastic to be able to share all of the portraits in one place before they hit the streets for good! AND I had a blast painting the Young Rapids live!!!

Thank you Carrie Enzler for taking this shot!

The coolest part of the night though might have been right at the very beginning. Here's what happened:

Thank you to Joe Bentley of the Young Rapids for snapping this picture!

When the Georgetown Patch wrote me last week about running a story on AS IS, I was thrilled.  I sent them a picture per the editor's request that I had snapped of a woman I had painted from the area. I assumed that the reporter would use the image as a source of inspiration for her article, but was surprised to see that the picture was published along with it! 

All's well that ends well though: I was chatting with a couple of early birds to the Sneak Peak when I spotted the subject herself taking in a portrait across the room! Can you imagine how amazing that was?! This woman is such a beautiful person too! She is a gentle soul with a charming southern accent. Her awesome hairdo, incidentally, is all her own, and more importantly, I was overjoyed to hear that she was so moved by the idea behind the project!

In a letter to the editor of the Georgetown Patch, one man wrote the following:

"That is Joy Blair and she has lived in Georgetown for over 50 years. She is a wonderful woman who used to own Blair House Antiques. She helps the homeless and is a joy to all who know her. Thank you for brightening my day with this picture(...)and I am sure she would love to have the painting."

While I offered Joy the option of taking the painting right off the wall that night, she said that she prefers to take it when all the other paintings are installed on the streets October 1st. One of the ideas behind AS IS was to give the gift of notice without regard to compensation (financial, verbal, etc.) That said, this unexpected twist in the plan brought about something beautiful that is all its own.