Today we woke to rain… with the forecast of more rain!  The schedule had a “flex day” built in, so this was it!  I went to The Prairie Berry Winery in  Hill City to hang an up-coming exhibition, so it will be up when we go there on Saturday for our meet and greet event (noon, for anyone planning to join us!)  The winery is a thriving place, and on a rainy day, seemed the perfect place to quite a few people, from the looks of it!  I will be the featured artist there through October.

http://www.prairieberry.com/events/?showevent=b5a5e414e18dee432e9c3ea231328bc7

While I was hanging my exhibit, my guests were having a most interesting day… visiting the shopping mecca of WalMart was of interest, and then something very few visitors get to do:  they went to a sale barn and witnessed a cattle auction!  Bill Hobbs is a cattle buyer in the area, purchasing cattle for various clients.  His wife, Judy, took the group to see how it is done.  Now, THAT is an authentic western experience!

Dick Termes

We visited Dick Termes and Markie Scholz at the Termesphere Gallery.

Dick is a well know artist, locally, nationally, and internationally.  He paints spheres:  being a master of 6 point perspective, and his paintings are on spheres of all sizes.  These beautiful artworks are known as Termespheres.   He also paints on a variety of complex 3-d shapes, and of course, on canvas as well.  His work is M. C. Escher-like, in that the more you look, the more you see, and optical illusion takes place, as his paintings are not only intriguing, but they spin as well, adding a variety of other amazing effects.

Check out his website: http://termespheres.com/

Markie Scholz

Markie is a professional puppeteer, and treated us to a sampling of her characters and how she presents them.  Markie’s website is a fun collection of what she does, and her business is called: Dragons are too Seldom.  (As she said, “They really are!”)    http://dragonsaretooseldom.com/

We finished the day at a delightful meal at Stanford’s.  This is a popular local restaurant, in which the decor is based on a popular T.V. show by the same name, about a junk dealer and his son.  The restaurant is filled with “Americana”  tacked on the wall in every corner – including the ceiling.  Yves Salort was taking a lot of photos there… I would LOVE to see this place through his eyes!

The Black Hills Pioneer had a really nice article about our exchange, and mentioned the blogs Janet Weight Reed and I are writing… so it is now about you, too!

http://www.bhpioneer.com/articles/2010/09/23/news/northern_hills/doc4c9b8819d9857315827921.txt