Laume's Studio

It's that time of year again. Witches and goblins, pumpkins and scarecrows, ghosts and cemeteries.... Well, I'm an odd person and I think of those things pretty much all year round. But this is the time of year when my enthusiasm starts to jack up (or should I say "jack-o-lantern up") to extra high, anticipatory levels.

Summer still holds court, and I am certainly not ready for it to be over. The problem with summer around here is that it's a very short season and once it's gone, it's gone for a long, long time. So, I'm still trying to squeeze every last, warm, green day out of the summer season, and yet I have no problem overlapping that with giddy anticipation that my favorite season of all, autumn, is fast approaching.

If my studio and supplies were available, I'd be in there right now doing something with witchy fabric or black cat stamps or pumpkin orange paper. But the mess is still in charge here, so instead I've spent a number of hours the last week cruising the 'net in search of new and old Halloween art and decorating ideas.

I was excited to discover I'm not the only one already in the mood, Artsymama put up a pre-anticipatory Halloween post yesterday. But mostly I was frustrated by how little I could find. I know it's out there. But the internet is a funny thing. Sometimes you aren't looking and stumble into a wealth of interesting sites and sometimes you can fish and fish all day and get nothing on your line but a few minnows. You know the big fish are out there, but you're somehow not casting your line in the right part of the lake.

Last night I finally had a little luck and now I have several good "fishing holes" bookmarked. These are mainly Halloween artist groups or shows with links to the participants websites. I'll post them here in case you feel like doing a bit of "fishing" yourself. (I'm not sure how the fishing analogy ties in with Halloween, but I like it anyway)

• EHAAG Home page - the Eclectic Halloween Artist's Group
• UHAT - Unique Halloween Art Treasures - not sure why this one is located on a myspace page but it seems to be where you can jump off to find the individual artists' pages
• HYR - a collection of artists called Halloween Year Round
• Halloween and Vine is a Halloween art show I've wanted attend for years now but autumn is a really hard time for me to try to do any traveling. It take place in one of my old haunts, Sonoma County. I've send you to the entry page but click in to find a list of participating artists.
• Ghoultide Gathering is a new show that will premiere this year in Michigan.
• Here's a link to a small group of artist's who are helping with a fundraiser for a cemetery in Missouri that was vandalized. That makes me so sad to hear of vandalism to this sort of history. It's so disrespectful. I read somewhere that Greyfriars Cemetery in Edinburgh was vandalized some time after we had visited. I'm glad we were able to see it beforehand, although I'm sure that sort of thing happens from time to time all over. All it does is make it more difficult for people who like to enjoy the history to get access to the location.
• Halloween Alliance - a list of Halloween folk artists (and some spooky music) on this page.
• Morbid Outlook - an online Goth magazine with an Art section. Not specifically Halloween, but still fun.
• Traditions - this is an online store that sells commercial and limited edition Halloween items. Not original art, but affordable and a huge selection of folk art items.

That should keep you busy for awhile. I'll have to do my gallery browsing later tonight. Right now it's time for me to SPOOK UP something for dinner and then I have to paint the section of wall I patched yesterday. All that mess waiting for me. Now THAT'S scary!