If things seem a little quiet on the 'news' front of late, it's because I'm working to incorporate a new medium in my palette: bamboo. Forget the nightmare stories about the plant that ate the South (that's kudzu, anyway). Instead, check out Black Belt Bamboost's plan to build an "creative educational interactive bamboo park" near the Black Warrior River in Northport. Someone has to build the sculptures, right?

I've had work on view several places this spring, starting with the Circle Gallery in Annapolis, where the Maryland Federation of Art's 35th Annual Art on Paper was on display in April. I wasn't able to make it up for the show, but it looked good in this online tour.

The Dogwood Arts Festival's Regional Fine Arts Exhibition opened shortly after that at the wonderful Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. The show ran April 6-27, and was just one facet of the much larger festival. 2,000 people went to the opening, so that feels like a big win.

From there, it was down to the Gulf Coast for another regional show, this time the Southern Regional Juried at Northwest Florida State College, May 6 - June 8, organized by the Arts and Design Society of Fort Walton Beach. The galleries at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center are beautiful spaces, definitely worth checking out if you're in the neighborhood.

Thanks to Rachel Dobson from the UA Department of Art and Art History, here are pictures from the opening of Claire Lewis Evans: Recent Sculpture at the Kentuck Museum Gallery on January 5, 2012.