CHRISTINA SMITH
FOCUSED STUDIES OF NATURE IN A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF GOUACHE & PENCIL

MY SHOW SCHEDULE

The shows that David and I exhibit at are juried shows.
That means we apply to the show and send digital images of our work with the application every year.  Judges for the show review all the applications and decide who will be accepted.  Whether we are in or not can vary every single year.  The best shows will have three or four times as many applications as booths to fill.  That makes filling a year's schedule pretty tricky and I may - or may not show up where you are used to seeing me.  The shows listed here are confirmed for 2018.  I'll add more as they become definite.

Booked for 2018

​Orange Beach Festival of Art - Orange Beach, Alabama
March 10 - 11, 2018

Fairhope's Annual Arts & Crafts Festival - Fairhope, Alabama
March 16 - 18, 2018    S Section St, Downtown Fairhope
 
Art  Fair  at  Queeny  Park - Edgar Queeny County Park,
March 23 -25, 2018   550 Weidman Road. Ballwin, Missouri

Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival - The Woodlands, Texas
April 7 - 8, 2018

LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival, Tallahassee, Florida
April 21 - 22, 2018

Art in the Square, Southlake, Texas
April 27 - 29, 2018

Summerfair - Cincinnati, Ohio (Coney Island)
June 1 - 3

Columbus Arts Festival -  Columbus, Ohio
June 8 - 10

Boston Mills Artfest - Peninsula, Ohio (between Cleveland and Akron)  July 5 - 8

Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts - State College, Pennsylvania  July 12 - 15

Uptown Art Fair - Minneapolis, Minnesota
August 4 - 6, 2018

Art  Fair  at  Queeny  Park - Edgar Queeny County Park,
550 Weidman Road. Ballwin, Missouri  Aug 31 - Sept 2

Autumn and Art at Bradley Fair - Wichita, Kansas
September 14 -16

Bayou City Art Festival Downtown - Houston, Texas
October 13 - 14

Bella Vista Arts & Crafts Festival - Bella Vista, Arkansas
October 18 - 20, 2018​

Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival - Pensacola, Florida
November 2 - 4

Covington Three Rivers Art Festival - Covington, Louisiana
November 10 - 11





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GALLERY

All of the PRINTS in my GALLERY are "Giclees" reproduced in my studio


The term "giclee" refers to our printing process.
 We produce the prints ourselves by scanning the original, color correcting in photoshop and printing using our Epson 7600.  
The prints are all produced on 100% rag, acid free paper using archival inks.
 The inks are lightfast 80 - 90 years under normal household conditions.
Hummingbirds
The smallest bird in the world is the hummingbird – many of them weighing less than a penny!  There are about 338 species and they are found only in the Americas.  Hummingbirds can hover with wing beats at 78 per second and are the only birds that can fly backward – and upside down!  Though most species are tropical they are found as far north as Alaska and south to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America.  The ruby-throated hummingbird is the only one commonly found east of the Rocky Mountains.  It manages a migration from wherever it starts (possibly as far north as Canada) south through Mexico or across the Gulf of Mexico to winter in Central America and the West Indies – a journey of as much as 2000 miles.

Indian legends, songs and rituals surround the tiny bird.  My favorite legend is a Mexican one claiming the wife of the war god accompanied the spirits of ancient Mexican warriors who died in battle to the “mansion of the sun” where they were miraculously transformed into glittering hummingbirds. 

How cool is all that!!!
 
 
 
Click on each image for more information
 
 
  1. "Spring Jewels"
  2. "Hummingbird & Fuchsia"
  3. "Wigelia Ballet"
  4. “A Clematis Moment”
Water Residents
 
 
Years ago, after a July show in Rockport, Texas, another bird artist offered to take me into a wildlife refuge owned or managed by the Audubon Society.  I had time to stay over and so I met him somewhere Monday morning and we hiked perhaps a mile along a path and into swampy woods.  I began to hear a decidedly raucous noise - a serious disturbance going on.  We rounded a corner and stepped through some brush.  Right in front of me was a narrow stream and filling the trees lining the other side were herons, egrets, roseate spoonbills, and Ibis all busy squalking, chattering and fussing about their personal territory.  We didn't matter to them at all!  A couple hundred birds clamored around on the tree limbs flapping wings and threatening each other with huge beaks while I watched amazed.  What a treat!  After a while, I noticed the gator quietly hanging out under all that activity.   I suppose he was waiting for someone to make a fatal mistake and come within his reach. I've been in the swamps in Louisiana, Florida and even Arkansas but I've never seen anything like that again.  
Thank you for that adventure James Offeman!
 
 
        Click an image for more information.
 
 
  1. “A Resting Place”
  2. “Lost Valley”
  3. “Competition at the Fishing Hole”
  4. “The Patient Fisherman”
  5. “Photo-op”
  6. “Pier Pressure”
  7. "Soul Searching”
  8. “Waterside Portraits”
  9. "Unexpected Guest"
  10. “Ruffled Feathers”
  11. " It's Really About the Water"
  12. "Private Roost"
Backyard Residents
Birds occupy a very special place in a nature lover’s heart and there are plenty of reasons for that.  A simple window feeder is a front row seat into personalities, habits and the changing seasons.  We marvel at the songs and variety, the glorious colors, patterns and forms – then there is the flying.  How we envy the flying!  We watch them swoop and dive, dodge a maze of branches, scoop up seeds or insects and be gone from us in an instant. To fly so effortlessly is such a marvel. With just a little suet, seed and sugar we can lure a dozen species into our backyards and our lives.
My mother didn't allow it but I've always picked up feathers.  I consider them a special gift from nature.  A bird's feathers allow flight, they keep the body warm in the worst weather, they shed rain or gives bouyancy and can even line a nest.  I have quite a collection now and can guess what bird most of them come from.
 
 
            Click each image for more information
 
 
  1. “Common Yellow-throat Warbler & Wild Grapevine”
  2. “Lincoln Sparrow”
  3. “Carolina Wren & Maple Whirlies”
  4. “Cherry Dinner”
  5. "Snappy Dresser"
  6. "Birds, Bugs, and Berries - Chickadee"
  7. "Birds, Bugs and Berries - Bluebirds"
  8. "Mulberry Harvest”
  9. “Top of the Morning”
  10. “Night Ghost”
  11. “Carolina Wren & Jasmine”
  12. "Morning Troubadour"
  13. "Reclaiming the old Homestead"
North America's
Giant Silk Moths
 
 
If you’ve ever come across a lime green luna moth or watched a cecropia hatch and unfold in a jar on your porch - you understand their magic.  The size and color of one of these night creatures is just amazing.  The moths that I’ve painted are all large, 3 – 6 inches, but some moths in this Saturniidai family are small.   They live an average of ten to fourteen days and do not eat, living off the fat they stored as caterpillars.  Attempts to produce silk from American silkworm cocoons have been unsuccessful and only the Asian silkworm is used for textiles.  They were a wonderful subject to paint and I hope I find the time to do more of them.
 
“Many Thanks!” to an enthusiastic and generous friend, John Laskowski.  He is an entomologist in Pennsylvania, known locally as "the Moth Man", who supplied me with specimens and is a dear friend.  We get to visit with John when we do a Pennsylvania show.  One year he invited us and a granddaughter we had with us to spend Monday morning at the Ned Smith Nature Center near Harrisburg.  The elephant edition of John J Audubon's work was on loan there from the Smithsonian.  The center was actually closed but John worked there and could get us in.  We all donned white gloves and got to turn the pages of this wonderful book.  
A very special honor and memory for us and a twelve year old granddaughter!
 
 
  1. "Luna Moth & Basswood”
  2. “Cecropia Moth & Sweet Gum”
  3. “Imperial Moth & Sassafras”
  4. “Regal Moth & Hickory”
Postcard Collages
This work has grown out of my interest in history and a love of old things.  We often stop at antique stores as we travel across the country and David creates sculptures and wall pieces from things we find there.  We've been doing this for several years and finally I picked up a postcard and wondered if I could paint on it.  That was the start and the basic idea has evolved in several directions.  I added fountain pens, and discovered propelling mechanical pencils.  Old maps, antique lace and buttons, book pages and sheet music - all fair game!
 
 
  1. "Won't I be pretty when I get sixteen? - 1908 Higginsville, Missouri"
  2. "Quite busy studying - 1930 State College, Pennsylvania"
  3. "Not a bad little place - Greenville, South Carolina 1946"
  4. " The Courtship of Miss Porter - Omaha, Nebraska"
  5. "Moonlight on the Lake - 1912 Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania"
  6. "Meadow Lark and Nebraska Soddy - 1911"
  7. "February 10, 1907 - Eureka Springs, Arkansas"
  8. "Florida Vacations"
  9. "Dear Sister Addie - 1911 State College, Pennsylvania"
  10. "Four Fishermen - In the Natural State - 1912 Eureka Springs, Arkansas"
  11. "An Old Citizen - New Orleans 1901"
  12. "Line up for the Camera!"

Here is one of my Commission pieces


Now I'm excited about the commissions I have.  I'm doing a piece for a lady from a scrapbook her mother put together.  The scrapbook is about the courtship between her mother and father while he was in the Army (later Air Force)  during World War II.  His plane was shot down over Romania and he was a POW there for three months. They were married just two weeks after he was released and home.  I've picked out telegrams, postcards, newspaper articles and photos to tell the story.  David helped me reproduce some of these items on transparent mylar so they could be layered over other pieces.  It's really quite interesting.  
My next project is another commission to hang over an upright piano that had belonged to a ladies grandparents. 
She has sent me their sheet music, grandma's white gloves, a page from grandfather's bible, a crocheted tablecloth 
to work with and photos.  Her grandmother always had a parakeet and blue morning glories and that parakeet will be fun to paint!
This is really exciting to me!  I feel like I'm helping a family tell their personal story.  These are visual biographies!  We are taking things out of attic boxes and bringing those distant memories back into the life of that family.  I think that's a very meaningful and wonderful thing to do.  I hope more of these projects come my way and I'd love to help you tell your family's story.
 

Recent Awards

 
 
There have been awards along the way and I’ve listed recent ones.
 
Three Rivers Art Fest - Covington, Louisiana
     2009 Award of Distinction
     2010 Best of Two Dimensional
 
Eastern Shore Art Festival - Fairhope, Alabama
     2010 Chairman’s Award
     2012 Best of Show
     2013 Chamber's Award

The Art Fair at Queeny Park - St. Louis, Missouri
     2016 Award of Excellence 
 
Bonita Springs Art Festival - Bonita Springs, Florida
     2009 Award of Distinction
     2011 Award of Distinction
     2015 Award of Distinction
 
Art Market - Bentonville, Arkansas
     2015 Best of Show

Arti-Gras, Jupiter, Florida
     2016 Award of Distinction
 
Bella Vista Arts and Crafts Fair - Bella Vista, Arkansas
     2009 Best of Show
 
Fort Myers Art Festival - Ft Myers, Florida
     2011 Award of Distinction
     2012 First Place Two Dimensional
     2014 Award of Distinction
 
Omaha Summer Arts Festival - Omaha, Nebraska
    2014 Award of Merit
    2015 Award of Merit
 
The Uptown Arts Festival - Minneapolis, Minnesota
     2013 Top 10% Award
 
Mt Gretna Outdoor Art Fair - Mt Gretna, Pennsylvania
     2007 Judge’s Choice
     2009 Best of Mixed Media
 
Summerfair - Cincinnati, Ohio
     2008 Best of Two Dimensional
 
Historic Shaw Art Fair - St. Louis, Missouri
     2013 Second Place Fine Art
 
Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival - Pensacola, Florida
     2013 Award of Honor
     2015 Judge's Award
 
Mosaics Festival for the Arts - St. Charles, Missouri
     2000 Award of Excellence
     2003 Award of Recognition
     2013 Award of Recognition
 
Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts - State College, Pennsylvania
     2013 Award of Merit
 
Summerfair - Cinncinatti, Ohio
     2008 Best of Two Dimensional
 
 
 
 
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