Selfie, Women Artists Mentors, and travel

Top Hat selfie

16 x 20

Oil on Raymar panel

I try to paint a self portrait from time to time.  It gives me a chance to paint from life and I get to wear some of my wonderful hats!  This time as I was painting it reminded me a funny story...

I belong to a mentoring group.  Women, Artists, Mentors...we refer to ourselves as WAM.  Debra Kierce, Helen Beacham, Carrie Roets Waller and Kim Minichiello are the members.  We work towards helping each other by advising, encouraging, cheering, commiserating, informing, and mutually admiring each others work with a genuine feeling of love and affection.  We have been fortunate to be able to travel together from time to time.  Our first meeting was a show in Charleston...we were all able to attend except for Carrie who was living in Japan.  I hated to see her left out so I decided to take a page from "flat Stanley,s" playbook and printed out a picture of Carrie that I mounted on a stick...so we could include her in all the group photos. 

A few years ago Flat Stanley was all over the internet.  Classes would send a cartoon character to friends and relatives to see how far and traveled he could get.  It was quite a phenomenon.  I decided it was a great way to include Carrie in our show!   I often have these ideas and they are not always met with enthusiasm...so you can imagine my delight when my fellow WAM members embraced the idea and it has become part of what we do when we travel.  We have pictures of each of our faces and we bring them along whenever two or more of us meet.  It is a fun way to keep everyone included.  We started calling them flatheads.  You can see my four flatheads that grace my studio...my WAM members are always with me.  

Funny story...we recently had a show at a wonderful museum in Miles City Montana.  Waterworks art Museum, coincidentally WAM also, hosted us.  Deb and I were able to attend so we dutifully brought along the other three flatheads.  As we were recounting the story of the flatheads to those in Montana we were quickly told that there is an Indian tribe nearby that are known as the Flatheads!  Who Knew????   We certainly did not want to offend and so refrained from using the name for our cutouts.  

Our next WAM adventure will be to Montreal to see Helen's hometown!  There will be sightseeing, sketching and we will get to meet Helen's sister.  No flatheads will be necessary as all of us are able to make the trip.