2012 in review: it was a pretty good year all told; although we were very sad to lose Dottie Arave who had been a mainstay of the club for many years. Dottie was a talented artist who always made the time and effort to support the Guild. For many years she handled Pick of the Month (our informal monthly art contest) and did a wonderful job.

Over Christmas we participated in the Clovis 100 year centennial first by sponsoring a Christmas tree to which we donated ornaments. Our theme was “an old fashioned Christmas). Then members put up art in the VIP room at Sierra Vista Mall when the centennial committee held its reception. We were able to continue with our window gallery at Sierra Vista Mall through the holidays and hope to be able to do the same this year.

All three of our shows did respectably well with entries and again our Miniature Works show sold art from the window gallery at the Mall. Our art receptions for the Old West Show and the Veteran’s show were well attended, although we could have used more artists showing up to receive their awards. We also started a picture scrapbook for the Old West and Veteran’s shows which can be downloaded from our website.

Gene Butler has done a wonderful job with our scholarship program and Central Valley Community bank has consented to sponsor this program so we can encourage young artists from local high schools at both the Old West and Veteran’s shows. We ended the year with a positive balance of about $1,500 in our checking account and of about $1,200 in our savings account.

Although October will be our last official meeting, there will be one more newsletter in 2012 to announce the results of the Veteran’s Art Show. This year the newsletter began running a series of guest articles on copyright which everyone appreciated, and were followed up by guest articles by some of our demonstrators. We hope to be able continue to provide our members with more articles on art techniques, internet and business tools in the coming year.  We also started our own web site www.clovisartguild.com – many thanks to Ma Ly for stepping in and becoming our web master. Clovis also has its own e-mail address now: ClovisArtGuild@att.net.

In February, March, April, and May our demonstrations were very well attended and many attendees brought in lots of art for Pick of the Month. Sadly, that attendance fell off drastically during June, July, and August when the hot weather kept a lot of artists home hiding under the air conditioners!

I’m looking forward to a great year in 2013 and I hope you are also!