Special thanks to David Abele and the team at Lakes Sotheby's International Realty!

I had a great time meeting Amy Lyste at the 3rd Street Gallery on my trip up to Grand Forks last weekend! They picked up 4 paintings of mine, and are going to have a show for me in the coming weeks- I am hoping that it is a good way to make a splash in town and get some recognition from the North Dakota Museum of Art- Maybe even the Plains Art Museum in Fargo too!

It is a quaint space, but Amy and her partner have a great eye, and the stuff there is displayed carefully and looks great. Ran into Adam Kemp… he is a wild man and always fun to see.

I also delivered and installed a painting to the Toasted Frog, and sent one to the NEW Toasted Frog in Bismark! Yeah NODAK!

Check out more about my new art leasing program HERE. If you know anyone who has space, and needs great art- please let me know!?

I had an interesting challenge with this commission. To create two paintings with great depth and dimension, and to only use one color other than white and black for each. Both started out as much larger compositions, and were edited down to the exact sizes that the client needed for their space. I love how they turned out.

Last week I had an exciting opportunity.

Thursday morning, I got up bright and early to go to estate sale in St. Louis Park on the way to delivering art to my friend Genie Castro in Hudson, Wisconsin. She was bringing it to a new gallery- Milward Farrell Fine Art that is showing both of our work in Madison, Wisconsin.

The estate belongs to an 86-year-old old-timer named Lou, who was an ex-Honeywell Exec and had a passion for woodworking and carpentry. Lou had recently moved to assisted living because of dementia, and would not be returning home. Needless to say, he had a collection of tools that would make most men salivate. Not only had he taken incredible care of his tools, but he had obviously invested a lot of time and money in quality and had customized each one of the tools with different guides and enclosures that worked with a really elaborate ventilation system. While I was there, I bought a really nice Oscillating Spindle Sander and loaded up into the car for the trip to Hudson. Here is a peek at what Lou was rocking in his shop-

On the beautiful drive along the river, I became really nostalgic about the time I spent making sculpture in college and became a little frustrated about how I didn't realize until after graduation how difficult it would be to continue that process without all the tools and expansive space I had access to at the Dittmann Center at St. Olaf College.

I took my mother for lunch at Barrio in Edina, and I confided in her in my frustration in my inability to execute large three-dimensional work, and my excitement in the incredible life's collection of tools available down the street. Of course, she had a solution. My brother has a large detached building at his house, that would be perfect for a studio… and why couldn't I just use that?

The fact that my brother was in Dallas for work, and we hadn't passed the idea by him yet, was just a detail.

We took a field trip to the sale immediately after lunch, and I promptly pulled the trigger on buying the entire collection of tools and the "remove at your own risk" ventilation system had been installed throughout the shop.

I was officially in business.

Within the next couple of days I made several trips with a 17 foot truck and my main man Dan, to move over all my new purchases. Here is the truck on our first trip-

Over the next few weeks, I'm committed to sharing pictures and progress of my new sculpture studio and the process of putting it together, as it takes shape!

PS I finally had the opportunity to break the news to my brother that I was taking over his building for my new laboratory, luckily he was just as excited as I was!

Here are a couple of pieces that I had hoped to win at this years Art Perchance at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts last week.

Sculpture by: Kristen Arden

Print by: Joseph Giannetti

Digital Oil by: Michael Murach

Monoprint by: Genie Castro

Here was my donation- "Blue No. 3" 18"x18" acrylic on canvas

Painting by: Drew Beson

The lucky winners of "Blue No. 3".  My awesome new friends- Dan Jensen and Julianne Amendola!