The Award Winning Kitty and ME!

As my regular readers know, I recently won the Printmaking Cash Award at Fleisher Art Memorial. Imagine my thrill when the check came from the Philadelphia Museum of Art!

To me it was just as thrilling that my woodcut print of a feral cat, "Kensington" was bought by another artist! That's Maria on your right, my print...now HER print... in the middle and me on your left. Of course, I signed, titled and numbered the print, which was #1 of my still-open edition. If you'd like to see my series of animal prints, click HERE If you're interesting in purchasing your own print of "Kensington" or any of my other animal prints, just email me at robinzebley@gmail.com.

So I should be busy printing more Kensingtons and other animal prints. Instead, we took Otto to the Open Studios at the 915 Building in Philadelphia. Here's Otto enjoying the art!


October is when the huge, all - city open studios tour is, so if you're anywhere near Philadelphia, keep that in mind...it's so huge, that it's split into 2 weekends, one east of Broad and the other west. It's a great time and you can buy fabulous pieces right off the easel and often score somewhat of a deal before they hit the galleries. I'll keep you posted on that.

Finally, today I'm working on the background of my Yorkie portrait, it's a very detailed, meaningful background, incorporating the Yorkie's mom's love of the beach and even a sentimental small portrait of her with her mother when she was a girl. So this is more time consuming than my usual background, but soooo meaningful! I enjoy doing human portraits, but my dog work takes most of my time. Same with horses, as much as I enjoy them, it's mostly dogs for me!

How Art Won the World Series in Philadelphia

Yes! The Phillies' win last night of the World Series has us all absolutely on Cloud 9. Folks who came here from other cities whose clubs have won in the past are scratching their heads at the absolute delirium that we Philadelphia fans are in.

Why?

Because we sports fans haven't won a championship (although we've been invited to some of the dances...) since newer skyscrapers have been built taller than Alexander Milne Calder's sculpture of William Penn that crowns City Hall. There had been a "gentleman's agreement" that no building could be built taller than this sculpture.

We call it The Curse. Most folks blame it on William Penn, but I think the Calder family had a thing or two to say about it...

The Calder boys have history here, too. Alexander Milne Calder, in addition to providing the sculptures for City Hall, trained at the oldest continuously run art academy in the country, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts http://www.pafa.org/School/27/(we call it simply "The Academy") with Thomas Eakins. So did his son, Alexander Stirling Calder, who sculpted the lovely Swann Memorial Fountain, just a short walk from City Hall. And finally one of , HIS son, Alexander Calder's mobiles hangs in the entryway of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And all are in a straight line....from grandfather's art to son's to grandson's.

So when Philadelphia decided to break the agreement and build taller than the William Penn sculpture...the curse began.

Hockey. Basketball. Football. Baseball. The Calders made us pay. Calder art would not be topped by a mere building!!

But last night, everything changed. We won the World Series! And why? As a homage to the William Penn sculture atop City Hall, workmen glued a tiny replica of it on top of the newest, tallest skyscaper, the Comcast Building. And the Calders looked down and saw that art was again top dog....and let us win.

For my regular readers, please indulge my sports/art blabbering. For anyone new, you've found the blog of American Animal Artist, Robin Zebley. My website is http://robinzebley.com and if you'd like to see and read more about art and animals in this blog, just click on the heading at the top to go to the top of my blog. Meanwhile, I'm shopping for the parade tomorrow...in the shadow of the Calders.