Avant Grande Art Show

Saturday, September 15, 2007 :
Four pieces of Scott's art got featured in an annual art show in San Francisco called the Avant Grande (hehe, cute name huh), which was put on by Starbucks and the Academy of Art. It was in a great venue, there were yummy appetizers, mini desserts, plenty of beer/wine...and of course, a coffee bar. There was a really great turn out, but most of the people there only knew about it because of word of mouth. Hello Starbucks, I think you can fork out some additional money next year to advertise! Anyway, as many of you can guess, there are lots of Academy students that work part time at one of the many Starbucks in the city. Therefore, there are plenty of art students and this show is a good chance for artists to get their work out there.
Scott had plenty of his business cards gone at the end of the night, which is great. Now hopefully all those people go to his website (http://www.scottabelonline.com/) and buy some art! After all, we need to pay for our wedding, peeps. :)

But seriously, it was a wonderful show and Scott got a lot of great response on his art. I love his huge pieces of digital fine art, which are his newest in the collection. He had one guy in SF want to buy the San Fran piece, but wanted it bigger as he had lots of wall space. Scott wasn't sure how it would look blown up from 13"x19" to about 40"x60", but it turned out beautiful and they are my favorite pieces so far. We have a large Rome piece in our living room above our couch and it looks amazing with our vaulted ceilings.

Great job at the show babe! You rock and your stuff looked amazing!

Labor Day Weekend

I finally got out of the house for Labor Day weekend! Scott, Robert, Liza and I took a nice long weekend off to join the rest of the crowds out camping. We went up to a place called Bass Lake about 2 1/2 hours from our apartment...just outside of Yosemite. It was a great recommendation from my aunt Gina, who I also got to see that weekend. She performs (plays guitar and sings) at a place called the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad. It used to be this old logging railroad back in the day and the huge steam train now runs twice a week to give visitors and tourists a ride. There's even a great BBQ and a train ride up to an open are where they have a bonfire and sing old fashioned and fun songs for entertainment. On the train ride up we even got stopped by train robbers! :) It was really fun...and great to see my aunt, her work friends and fellow entertainers, and her boyfriend Dale.

After the Railroad on Saturday night, we set up camp in a campground near Bass Lake. The next day we spent all day on the Lake and rented some canoes to get around. It was a hell of a workout and very fun. I'd never been in a canoe before - it was crazy trying to paddle around all the boats and jet skis in the water. I swear they almost tipped us over a couple times. But still it was really fun, I'd do it again. We ate lots of yummy BBQ while camping and I loaded up on the s'mores - because this was the only time we got to go camping all summer. How sad is that!! We also got to take a nice hike that overlooked the lake and played around on some of the cool trees on the trail.

It seemed like such a short weekend! Booo...there goes the summer. Oh well, I absolutely love fall here in the bay area. It's the most beautiful season here and also the warmest for San Fran. Hopefully I'll have time to keep up with some blogs for the next month before I head into my busy season during Nov-Dec. :)