Chroma Studios and Gallery First Friday Opening

We are very excited about our upcoming opening! The new gallery and classroom space are amazing! If you are local, please come visit us!

When: Friday, October 3rd, 2008 5 - 8 p.m.
Opens October 3rd and runs through Oct. 31st. We will also be open for the two weekends of Balloon Fiesta, Thurs. thru Sun. from 12-6pm.

Where: Chroma Studios and Gallery, 1606 Central Ave SE, Suite 102 & 201, Albuquerque, NM

What: Chroma Studios and Gallery Art Opening - Feathers and Flowers

Chroma Studios is happy to present the opening of our new gallery and classroom
space. We have expanded since our grand opening in June to include a gallery
and classroom downstairs. This First Friday, our new gallery will feature the
work of Chroma co-founders Paula Manning-Lewis and Josephine Brionez de Flores.
We will also have live guitar music by Chroma artist Aaron Lewis, who has
recently released a new cd Space Travel. Our upstairs gallery will include the work of our studio
artists Barak Naggan, Sarah Rose, Caroline Blaker, Chris Schelling, Kirk McGee,
Terry Hansen, and vashti b. Plus guest artists, Susan See, Diane Reitz and Michael Gallegos.

Hope to see you there!

Paula Manning-Lewis :)

Overwhelmed

I have a blog post planned all about the Maravilla benefit for the National Hispanic Cultural Center that we attended on the 13th, I even have photos! Of course the rechargeable batteries are no longer taking a charge, so I can't get the photos off the camera. Anyway, maybe later in the week.

We have under two weeks until our next opening at Chroma Studios. October 3rd is our First Friday show, our first with the Albuquerque Arts Crawl. Lots and lots to do to get ready. We painted the new gallery space at the end of last week and still have to hang art. Plus, clean the floors, promote the show, on and on!

Anyway, figured I'd post something to let everyone know I'm still alive, just busy as usual!

I will try to get photos posted of the new space as soon as I have batteries. Hope everyone is having a wonderful day, week, month and year!

Damn you Rocco!

Now that I've reorganized and started back on the road to following a business plan, I decided it was also time to whip my fat butt back into shape! I've gained over 30 pounds in the past year and I'm literally making myself sick. I haven't felt 'healthy' in over a year, since I stopped my regular 5 day a week workouts. My back is always killing me.

Enter Rocco, personal trainer and recent Albuquerque resident. I found him on my favorite Albuquerque website, Duke City Fix, in a blog post about his Boot Camp workout class. He actually helped a girl lose 30 lbs. in 30 days on the MTV show 'Made'. That was enough to get me interested. I had planned to go check it out since he offers the first day for free, but ever the procrastinator, I put it off. In the meantime, I added Rocco as a friend on Duke City Fix. So, yesterday, who shows up at Chroma Studios? Rocco himself! I guess he saw the sign for Chroma Studios and decided to stop in to check it out. Really nice guy. We had a nice chat and he gave me a few free passes for the boot camp. Now I guess I had no choice but to show up. He took the time out of his day, so why not go work out?

Damn you Rocco! What a workout! I haven't worked out that hard since my days in real boot camp(Army) when I was 18 years old. I'm a little older now, to say the least! I seriously thought I was going to die, or puke, or both. Thank god by the time I started getting the sick feeling in my stomach we were on the next to last exercise. I have to admit it felt good, once I was done! Although, my ENTIRE body was shaking for about an hour afterwards! What an awesome workout, but I have to say it wasn't like boot camp in one way, Rocco is a funny, nice guy! He made sure I did the exercises correctly and talked about eating candy at the State Fair! Nothing like the drill sergeants I had back in the Army. I'll be back on Wednesday for sure, time to lose that 30 lbs!

Organizing Myself

I've been working at getting myself back in gear for what seems like months. I guess it HAS been months. I'm just not myself anymore, but I miss me! I need to get back to myself, my art, my routine. It's been hard, but I'm just tired of my whining already. I'm not usually one to sit and feel sorry for myself. I'm usually hyper-motivated, I love life for crying out loud! 

This past weekend I took out my planning notebook and started working on revising my business plan. Turns out, from looking at my old planner notebook, it has actually been 6 YEARS since I used it. Ironically, the last date I used it was the day I got a call from a hospital in El Paso to let me know that my dad had suffered his first heart attack. He was ok, going to need bypass surgery, but he would be ok. That day, I rushed down to El Paso and spent a couple of weeks with my dad and helped him out as he recovered. 

There were a lot of other things going on that year. Problems with my 2 older sons, hospitalizations, drama, all the things that can derail anyone. However, I hadn't realized until this weekend that I have been derailed for so long! 

Not totally, to be fair, I went back to work and I've worked hard with my art the past 6 years. My style totally changed. I've painted a whole new body of work since then. I just haven't worked diligently on my business plan or used my daily planner since then. 

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. It was interesting to make that discovery though. So, I finally sat down and worked on my plan on Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours. I started all over, from scratch, after looking at the old plan and realizing how things have changed in the past 6 years.

So, as a way to get myself going, I just finished reading Alyson Stanfield's book "I'd Rather Be In The Studio". I have been a subscriber to her Artbizblog for years and have always enjoyed her newsletters. Her book is great! It's completely up to date with the 21st century. She spends a lot of time on the internet, blogging, websites, etc. I've read many, MANY artist promotion/marketing books and I have to give Alyson's book a big fat two thumbs up! I'm even thinking about using it for an art marketing class I'm putting together for Chroma Studios. 

After all that, I'm feeling pretty motivated again! Yay! I have so much work to do, a new website to build, art cd/dvd to put together, mailing list to update, etc, etc. Not to mention blogging more often!