On Saturday, I painted in the art tent at the Deerpark Family Festival.

It was a beautiful day, and Deerpark residents made a good showing. I saw old friends and neighbors, met new friends, saw beautiful art, listened to music (even danced a little, with a woman who spent her afternoon kicking up her heels), and I had a great time.

I made two paintings to donate to the Port Jervis/Deerpark Humane Society. Frick, above, is one of them. The other, you will see next week. You can see them both in person, if you visit the Humane Society’s tent next Sunday at the Fall Foliage Festival in downtown Port Jervis.

The donations are part of the Art for Shelter Animals Project, a group I co-founded and continue to run. You can check out our blog at artforshelteranimals.blogspot.com.

Here’s how it works: You make a portrait of an animal in your local shelter or with a local rescue group, and then donate the art to the shelter or rescue group. Before you give it to them, you take a photo and send it to me, and I will upload it to the blog and write a little about you, and a little about the recipient group.

The shelter or rescue group can do whatever it wants with the art. They can sell it, auction it, reprint it on tote bags (this idea came from a young shelter worker, Michaela, who befriended me on Saturday), give it as an inducement for adoption, or for volunteer work – or they can just use the art to make their shelter more attractive. What they do with it is up to them.

In the summer, Susan Miiller, an artist who lives in Deerpark, engineered a small-works animal show in a doctor’s office in Port. Art for Shelter Animals Project painters from around the world sent pieces to be in the show. If they sold, the entire price went to the shelter. If they didn’t sell, the pieces went to the shelter.

My paintings on Sunday were really part of that show.

I love our home here in Connecticut. I love being near my family. I love not living beside a river with a temper (we lived on the banks of the Neversink in Meyers Grove). But I loved living in Orange County, too, and I miss it. Painting in the festival, visiting my old neighbors and neighborhood, and seeing again – and with fresh eyes – the beauty of the region made me miss my old home even more.

But life takes you where it takes you. And that’s OK with me.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2010 at 6:22 am and is filed under Carrie Jacobson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.