Bluebird Sightings Make Me Happy

While bluebirds hang out in North Texas year round, there are often gaps of time between when I see them in my backyard. I was experiencing one of those bluebird sighting droughts before I mowed a couple of days ago. As I rounded a curve in my mowing pattern I noticed a male bluebird perched near the top of my jujube tree. I looked around to see if there was a female nearby and sure enough, she was sitting atop my chain link fence. It just made me smile to see them around again. Perhaps this response comes from growing up during a time when bluebird populations were very low and there was a push was being made to save them. To learn what you can do to support bluebird populations in your area of

Texas, Texas Parks and Wildlife has an extensive, informative pdf on all things bluebird.

I usually see bluebirds in my yard when they're looking for food. They like to perch on my chain link fencing, tall plant stakes, trees or anything else from which they can swoop down and catch an insect in an adjacent open patch of lawn or pasture. I sometimes see newly fledged bluebirds and have even seen their parents feeding them. I don't know if they are breeding in a natural nest cavity on my property or in a bluebird house provided by one of my neighbors. Whatever the reason, I enjoy seeing them around. The photos in this post are from previous years and show a male and female sitting on my chain link and a young bluebird perched on a wooden structure.

Welcoming the First Day of Spring

Often I share images of blooms from my yard to welcome in the first day of spring. This year my fresh blooms are in the form of a new pair of floral earrings I created.

I recently acquired a strand of carved jade flowers. When I was storing my new supplies this strand and the spring-like weather we were having called me to create something using the flower beads. I pulled out several other strands of jade to see what I wanted to pair with the carved flowers to make a pair of earrings. I settled on using a head pin with a ball end on the open side of the carved flowers and a darker green jade sphere on the stem side. For some reason the spherical beads made a more pleasing design than the cylindrical ones that mimicked a stem better.

Now that we have reached the spring equinox marking the first day of spring, we begin to enjoy more light than darkness from now through the fall equinox.

As the daylight portion of your days lengthens, I hope the weather is warming where you are and that flowers and trees are budding out. Sunshine, flowers and spring green everywhere is a great tonic after a very gray winter.

Monarchs on the Move

While the fall monarch butterfly migration seems to be more concentrated through my location than the spring one, it is time for us to be on the lookout in North Texas for the butterflies are on the move. Sightings of monarchs laying eggs on milkweed in Austin have already been reported. Report your sightings too.

You can help sustain monarchs on their journey north by planting milkweed and nectar sources for them. There are many good native nectar sources as well as

flowering shrubs, annuals and perennials found more commonly in the nursery trade.

I have also seen well traveled monarchs on several flowers not included in any of these lists such as sunflowers and hyacinth vine bean flowers as seen in this post. I suggest trying to fit in some of the plants in the lists but if you can't, put out colorful nectar producing flowering plants and hope to see a fluttering patch of orange land on your flowers to refuel on its journey.

Mansfield Arts Week Includes Work by C Stein

Arts Week in Mansfield coincides with spring break. This ten day event (Thursday, March 7 - Sunday, March 17) combines arts from every spectrum. I posted last week about one facet of Arts Week that I am participating in, an artist reception from 6-7 pm, Friday, March 8 at the Mansfield Public Library for artists whose work is currently hanging in the library. This week I wanted to share a few more opportunities for you to find me and my work in Mansfield as part of Arts Week. I have five of my photographic art

pieces hanging inside Calibration Chiropractic, one of the businesses who have offered artists space to show their work as part of Arts Week. I will be there at specific times Monday - Wednesday, March 11 -13.

Monday, March 11 is Kids Day. A potter will be doing pottery wheel demos from 10am - 2pm that day at the clinic my artwork is hung in. Many other events are happening for Kids Day throughout the city. I will also be at the clinic for both days of the Historic Downtown Mansfield Arts Walk, Tuesday the 12th from 1-4pm and Wednesday the 13th from 5-8pm.

There are plenty of additional activities and events going on during the rest of Mansfield Arts Week. My art is scheduled to continue to hang at Calibration Chiropractic throughout the month of March.

Dragonfly and Wildflower Art on Exhibit at Mansfield Public Library

The theme of the new art exhibition at the Mansfield Public Library is the 2019 Spring Mansfield Reads! book Before We Were Yours. Art was accepted for this exhibition that embraced imagery and themes that pop up in the novel. Two of those themes were dragonflies and wildflowers, right in my wheelhouse.

I created a new wildflower piece of photographic art that was accepted as part of the exhibit, along with two of my existing gallery wrapped canvas dragonfly images.

The Mansfield Public Library is hosting an artist's reception as part of their kickoff of this exhibition at 6 pm on Friday, March 8. I plan to attend and would love to visit if you can make it too. If you can't get to the reception, the art will be on display through Thursday, June 20.

This exhibition kick-off is part of Mansfield Arts Week. I will share another opportunity to see more of my work in Mansfield as part of Arts Week in next week's blog post.

Fashion Show in AVAA 2019 Regional Exhibition

If you enjoy viewing a wide range of media, styles and subjects of art by local artists, then you need to stop by the Bob Duncan Center in Arlington to view the Arlington Visual Arts Association's 2019 Annual Regional Exhibition. My matted and framed entry, "Fashion Show", of a leafy sea dragon was selected to be included in the show this year. (You will find it in the display case. The reflections from the case and the picture frame made it difficult to see some of the details of the image so I have also included a

watermarked version of the original in this post.)

Some of the art can be viewed whenever the Bob Duncan Center is open. These pieces are on the east wall of the main hallway. The rest of the exhibit hangs inside the room on the west side of the building. As long as the room is not in use, you can view the remainder of the show when the center is open as well. The exhibition opened on February 5, 2019 and runs through April 8, 2019.

New Digs - Iridescent Dreams Kestrel

By now, quite a few pieces of my photographic art prints have found their way into customers' homes. And sometimes I am lucky enough to have a customer come up to me at a later show and tell me how much they love their purchase hanging in their home. It always makes me feel good to know that something I created brings joy to someone else. What is more rare is for me to get a glimpse of what my artwork looks like in its new setting.

The very first time that happened was when a customer snapped a photo of a recently purchased matted print they framed and posted the photo to my facebook page. Recently a customer texted me a photo of a ready to hang piece of art in her home that she purchased from me at the Happy Holidays Pop-Up Market this past holiday season. My customer was actually also a vendor

at the market and liked my "Iridescent Dreams" kestrel series matted and framed print so much when she dropped off her product that she purchased it and took it home with her.

While I usually don't share identifying information about my customers, when I got permission to share this customer's photo on my blog, she mentioned she would share my post once I published it. Since she was a vendor at the market and has an Etsy store, it only seems fair to thank Sabrina of The Sleepy Cottage publicly for sharing. The eyelashes pillow in her photo looks like her brand.