Hi all. I would like to start by thanking Terry for allowing us to gather here and discuss our passion, Harrison Fisher. I think that he is one of the greatest illustrators. I love are in general. My favorite is Ameican Impressionism.

Welcome Emma, tell your folks to come on down.

Hi current and future users.Thanks Terry for giving us a common place to gather.I am also a big fan of Harrison Fisher.I am also a big fan of quite a few other Illustrators of the early 1900's.

Hi Jim. I am glad that you got my email. What other illustrators do you like to collect? Oh, about the Comsmo cover that I was going to color copy for you --- well because of copy right laws I will not be able to do it. Sorry. I took some magazines to have color copied for Carol and the guy there wouldn't do it for me. What did you but from Naomi? I just got her list today and all the goos stuff was already gone.

Hi Jim. I am glad that you got my email. What other illustrators do you like to collect? Oh, about the Cosmo cover that I was going to color copy for you --- well because of copy right laws I will not be able to do it. Sorry. I took some magazines to have color copied for Carol and the guy there wouldn't do it for me. What did you but from Naomi? I just got her list today and all the good stuff was already gone.

Sorry. I didn't mean to send that twice. I was trying to fix my spelling mistakes and I notice that I still typed some thing wrong. Oh well. Does Joanne have access to the internet? Why did you start collecting Fisher? I remember the day that I discover one of Fishers magazines (the cosmo cover of Sept 1925). I never knew that any thing so fantastic existed.

Hi Susan,That's okay about the Cosmo. cover.I wish I knew more about the copy right laws.I wonder if there is still one on items that old?I was fortunate enough to be one of the first ones to respond to Naomi's letter.Ipurchased all the WW1 era magazine covers,mother/baby covers,and a few romantic covers.Joanne has access,but just through work.The first item that attracted me to Fisher was 'The Greatest Moments" series.What are some of your fovorite images by him?

HI Susan, Me again .Let's move future conversations to the Harrison Fisher area.What do you think?

Welcome Jim and Susan. Make yourselves at home!

Howdy. I'm sorry to confess I haven't a clue who Harrison Fisher is, but I'll sure check out that topic. I like art (duh) and thought I might see what you folks had to say. Are you all fabulous artists? I'm a quiet, at-home artist myself (not for public consumption). My latest craze is colored pencils, and I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a workbook or something for them...there are tons of books and classes for almost every other media but not these (occasionally a mention at the back of a charco l sketch book). Please help! I'm having fun but need guidance!

Check out Nikolaides book on drawing for openers.

Hi, I'm Riette. I work as an artist in Switzerland, but come from Namibia. Will that make a respectable introduction, Paul? Aubrey, if you're into colouring pencils, why not try any normal drawing course? They normally introduce colours after getting the dry stuff (proportion, balance, that sort of thing) over and done with. And then it becomes great fun and, because the lessons become more interesting altogether (what with all those colours to exite you), one's drawing improves rapidly over-all.

Oh, Jesus, I've just responded over a year too late!

*smile* that's okay Riette... better late than never! And time is relative anyway... it's the year 2036 in some places!

Not any more, I just reset the date.

How very reassuring - I would have been 62!

hey guys! just wanted to drop in a say hello and you guys are in for a treat with riette as your new hostess!

Thank you for the vote of confidence, Wolf!

Just set up riette with hostly powers here.

??

Oh, I see!! There's a Kill and retire button. Thank you, Terry.

hihi...time to install a flashy conference header, Riette!

or do whatever you see fit, Miss Hostess!

Patience, now! (need to wait till the kids are in bed before I can try an figure out what next . . . )

boy, do i understand that!

I seem to be the only computer bummer around here.

you'll soon get used to it!

Uh, I didn't even know there was an art conference...

Don't worry, neither did I until VERY recently. It is very obscure, isn't it? But Mike has promised to help me fix that - as soon as I manage to figure out my scanner . . .

wow, riette, did you create that picture? cool!

It contains the different facets of all of you in it. The cat's head represents Stacey (she loves cats and is as alert) The body is (suppose to be) that of a Wolf - represents your funny, frolicking wolfie side. The face in the middle represents Terry, who is the central figure of the spring. The big eye represents Wer, for he never misses a thing. The smile has something to do with Jim's funny, and sometimes mysterious responses. The crazy colours represents Mike, as he is a very creative person with many different, colourful shapes floating around in his head. And the black and white background represents Autumn. She is always there, sometimes also in the background, but so essential with her fine sense of black and white, right or wrong - I have never seen her treat anyone unfairly here.

how sweet of you!

How *very* cool!

(*trying to suppress a giggle*) Which part is Jim?

The mouth!!! ha-ha!

WOW *BEAM* :-))

We're on at the same time!! So where did you come up with these little faces, Mike? :-))))))

ummm....just picked 'em up along the way, i guess

They're sweet. My favourite is the one that winks.

for more smileys, Riette (they're also called emoticons...) try http://members.aol.com/bearpage/smileys.html

Thanks, muffin! I should be just about able to manage that.

typing with your toes yet?

ha! NO! The fingers on the broken arm type okay, AND I've got four left on the other, so apart from the occasional pressing of keys with my tongue, I'm doing great!

For the first time in months I have completed a painting today which was utter, utter crap. I find that very disturbing, and pretty depressing. Even destroying it hasn't helped me feel better about it. What a pain.

we all have off days. just try again!

Yea, even Mark McGuire doesn't hit a home run every time he comes to the plate.

Throw it on the bonfire and say the hell with it! Try again tomorrow.

I'm sure I will. Not very good at handling failure. BUT MORE IMPORTANT ISSUES AWAIT US: I have mailed a girl called, Susan, who came here twice just after the conference started. I have invited her back. Can you think of anyone else I could mail and invite?

You can check some conference userlists. You can groupmail them if you like.

Cool! Okay, I'll do that.

You'll have to make up a letter and send it to me for remailing to the ulist you specify (in other words, which conference ulist).

okay, I'll do that. And since you are more experienced, could you then check the letter, and add things that you think should be in there, please Terry?

Sure, cook it up and I'll do a taste test.

Hopefully I'll be better at cooking up letters than food...

Wow, girl, your conference looks awesome! Really awesome!

Thank you, deary! I've been horribly lazy though - I apologize. Just don't have the strenght to face art at the moment.

You'll be able to face it again at some point.

riette, would you please tell me about the cd covers you're designing? i'd like to find them in the stores when they're released. who's the musician?????

That's really nice of you, Wolf, but I'm afraid they're only going to be released here. That's how provincial I am. The musician in a composer called, David H�nigsberg. He is having his 25th anniversary celebration. For this he had a cd done of some of his most important works, and it's going to come out in a limited edition of 200, hugely over-priced at SFr. 300-, big ego trip and all that. Anyway, so he asked some artists in Switzerland design and paint small, practical cd-covers - so that each cd ill have an original work or art as a cover. Yep, that's how low I've sunk.

Why don't you put the designs into your gallery topic to show everyone how low you've sunk?

riette, you're so silly. i think it's absolutely wonderful that you were selected! and you never know, there are lots of scouts out there. thanks for telling me who it is. if you don't want to or are not allowed to post the work here, that's ok. i can try and look the guy up via the internet. do you get a royalty or anything for each cd sold?

Really, are they available to the general public?

Only the general public who attend the celebrations! Another one of those artist things. He gives a big party for his friends - yet his 'friends' have to pay SFr. 300- to hear his music! Unbelievable. Wolf, I'll post the cover pictures as soon as I've got the work out of the way - it really nothing spectacular; one can't do much on such a small surface. I just built little round boxes, the size of a cd, lined the inside with felt to protect the cd, and now I'm doing little paintings on top. Some are older designs like 'the embrace', and others are new designs, which I will later turn into larger paintings. And yes, I get a small fee - not enough to make me any less pi$$ed off with myself...

Sometimes adversity, self imposed or external, makes you reach new heights.

That sounds very wise to me.

well, it's a lot better than the "offer" you once had received, i'll tell you that! i don't understand why you feel badly about your decision to do these covers. i am in no way an artist in the way you are but i was completely floored at the amount of enthusiasm received for the design of the emblem i have yet to post. in fact, my big boss asked me if i wanted to design one for a higher group. i said, sure! no pay, just the satisfaction of knowing that i get to use my creativity and apply it somewhere. about your cd's, i didn't realize you were making the cd box too. i thought the covers were premade and all you did was the jackets inside the cd. i still think it will be wonderful and is a wonderful thing to do. i seriously doubt the shin-dig is for his true friends. these are just the people who want to meet and greet, see and be seen!

I know - I'm being unfair and stuck-up. It's just that the sort of thing that happened with the gallery boss, and then the idea at having to be at this celebration just to put a stupid signature on the cd-covers when people buy them; you know, like anyone could give a damn about Ri�tte Walton's stupid signature! It's just a big farce. The BUSINESS, the SHOW of art just takes all the love for it out of me. It sort of reminds me of a circus. What goes on in the tent - if you catch my drift. I don't t ink I have an artist's temperament. I think the ideal thing would be to get someone glamorous to impersonate me, and take the credit for my work, and who can take most of the earnings for all I care. That way I'd just be able to do my art, and leave the business of it up the person. I mean, I'm an artist, nothing more, and I hate the way one is expected to put oneself on display like a damned picture - like a thing. And more disturbing than that even, is the notion that this is what artists WANT. I m an, art is about ART, right? To GIVE something to people. Isn't that enough reason for practicing art? Why the big performance about it?

Unless you're a performance artist or something. Which it wouldn't seem like you are, dear Ree! I admire your dedication to the purity of your art form.

That is kind of you Terry. But I sometimes wonder if it isn't just another form of egotism. I just don't know anymore.

i think egotism would be running around hob-knobbing with all the "you got to know me to be famous" people and hanging out at 500 a plate shindigs. you paint for the sake of painting. it brings you pleasure, you're good at it.

I agree with you, Wolf. I don't find you egotistical, Ri�tte - at least not in that respect.

I'll have to go along with Sonja and Wolfie.

riette, we're not just saying this stuff. i don't think any of us would if we didn't believe it *hugs*

Thank you - that makes me feel a little better about myself. I sometimes think I'm a terrible, egotistical and unreasonable monster who does things just to get its own way - that is how the people who don't agree with me make me feel when they say stuff about me. I think I'm going to stop painting for exhibitions, do my studies, and write a book about art where I won't have to face anybody. I just get sick of being called 'wayward' or 'bad', because of my art. It's such a bore.

You CANNOT stop painting because of this, Ri�tte. You will end up resenting yourself for giving up on something you're talented in, just because other people didn't like the way you saw the world. You can send all your pictures over to me even! I'd be ever so happy to take care of them for you!

no kidding. do not stop painting....you'd be stooping to their level girlfriend! and do write that book. tell all about the stuff you've gone through with these so-called art experts. who are they to judge what you see? a bunch of dorks, i'll tell you. paint for yourself, you'll be so much happier for it. and remember, no one can MAKE you feel anything. you are your master!

Add my voice to the chorus of "don't stop"s!

I'll try. I did have an interesting dream last night, and something seems to be happening.

And? And?

She is working away, refusing to show me any of it....

Maybe for now but you'll get to see it first anyway...

I never take anything for guarrantee with Ri�tte!

Nothing?

Silly! How horrible I must be!

Funny, you don't seem to be horrible.

But can be at times....

Everyone has a bad day now and then. That doesn't make anyone horrible. The truely horrible people are those who refuse to allow for this.

Speaking words of wisdom here! I never thought of it like that - but I really am very horrible sometimes; just so you know.

I'd have to see it to believe it. I have heard this litany before and the person involved was overstating the situation every time.

Oh, ask anybody here - they'll tell you!

Like I said, I'd have to see it to believe it.

Tim, all you gotta do to see it is...attack her! It's done wonders for me!!!

I would never do that. Riette is such a sweet person. Why in the world would I want to attack her. Anyway, I was raised not to do such a thing. I would irritate all the women in my family. They are really a formidible bunch. Seriously though. I really was raised not to attack women. While I was growing up, my mother did volunteer work. She worked in witness protection at the sheriff's department, so there were a lot of very big men with guns around to reinforce the lesson.

That's a gorgeous response, Tim. How comforting to know that men like that still exist. Wer, you never attacked me! (Did that all by myself!)

It's probably out of fashion, now, but that is the way I was raised. And I was only about half kidding about the formidible women. One of my sisters was attacked by her husband, with the idea of beating her up. What an idiot. my sister has knocked out a horse with one punch. she had him served with divorce papers, right after he came out of intensive care. she was bruised pretty badly. He had six broken ribs, one of which had punctured his right lung, a shattered jaw, fractured ulna--right arm, fractured skull, and a broken neck.

that's too bad that your sister had to go thru that, but that idiot sure got what he deserved. i have four younger sisters, and with the exception of smacking each other around when we were little, i was also raised in the very Mexican tradition of total respect for the princesses!

I was talking about women outside the family. Were I to raise a hand to one of my sisters, I'd have been killed, literally. Some things inhuman, should not be allowed to live.

"Some things inhuman, should not be allowed to live." I couldn't agree more...

My brother is a real gentleman too, but we annoy him so much sometimes, then he goes and fetches a rope, and ties us together, back to back!

Sometimes i've been tempted to do that to my sisters. The thought of what would happen to me if I did, let it remain just a temptation