If you live in Southwest or Southcentral Wisconsin, Southeastern Minnesota, Northeastern Iowa, or Northern Illinois, you might want to plan a trip to Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin next weekend. Not only is it the beginning of apple picking season at the local orchards, it's also time for the Driftless Area Art Festival (September 15-16).

The Driftless Area, a unique region that escaped the glaciers of the Ice Age, is an inspirational setting to many talented artists and artisans. Its hills and valleys are home to painters and potters, woodworkers and weavers, musicians and metalsmiths.

To see the breadth and variety of their creations, you usually have to visit studios, stores, and galleries across the area. But once a year in September, these artists gather together in Crawford County, Wisconsin, at the Driftless Area Art Festival in Beauford T. Anderson Park in Soldiers Grove.

View the 2007 list of exhibitors.
Find lodging.

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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to join my husband on a hunting trip on a ranch in eastern Wyoming, which adjoins the National Grasslands. Since I went at the last minute, replacing a hunter who had to back out of the trip, I didn't have a chance to get a license and hunt myself, but I got to tag along and shoot a variety of game with my camera.

On the fourth day of hunting I decided I need a change of scenery, so I drove over to the Black Hills of South Dakota to scope out the area. In addition to Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, and some of the other tourist sites, there are quite a few galleries located in a triangle stretching from Hot Springs in the southern end to Rapid City in the east to Spearfish in the northern end, and then south again through Lead, Hill City, and Custer.

I found a very pretty gallery with work from a wide variety of artists in Custer called A Walk in the Woods Gallery and Gifts.

It's located on the main drag, Mt. Rushmore Rd., just down the block from the Songbird Café & Gallery, a great place to grab lunch and admire the work of a few more local artists. Not far away in Hill City, which is north of Custer, the galleries Warrior's Work and Ben West Gallery share the same building on Main St. Head on up to Lead, which is not far from Sturgis and Deadwood, and find the Blue Dog Framers & Studio Gallery.

Spearfish, a little farther north, is home to the Spearfish Art Center Gallery.

Hop on Interstate 90 and head down to Rapid City to see the Prairie Edge Trading Co. & Gallery. You'll find the Shaman Gallery on N. River St. down in Hot Springs.

If you've never been to eastern Wyoming and are curious about the scenery, I've put together a few photos from my hunting trip in a slide show. I'm not sure I'd want to live there — it's a little desolate for me — but it sure is a beautiful place to visit. If you get a chance to visit the Black Hills, plan some time to drive through the Badlands National Park on scenic Route 44, just east of Rapid City. It's definitely worth the drive.

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I'm not much of a gambler, so whenever someone suggested that we take a trip to Las Vegas, I wrinkled my nose and suggested a quieter, more remote, and less expensive destination. Last week I finally had the excuse to drag myself there — the Adobe Max Conference, which by the way, was awesome.

As I expected Las Vegas was bustling with people, and was on the noisy and risqué side. But the city also surprised me — it was beautiful. The lights, the fountains, the sculptures, the buildings — I'm not sure where to begin. The strip is a marvel of imagination and architecture. Never mind the casinos, the sites and shopping opportunities are unbelievable.	Caesars Palace at night photographed from inside The Flamingo
After watching one of my work cohorts lose a few dollars at the slot machines of The Venetian, the three of us wandered along the strip to take in some of the sites. The Venetian includes a shopping area designed to look like Venice, complete with winding canals and opera-singing gondoliers. The ceiling is painted to look like the sky, and the interior lighting changes with the hours, simulating the day and night. The effect is so realistic, you'd swear you were outside. Shops with Italian handbags, shoes, and boots ringed the canal, but I also found a photo gallery of Peter Lik, an award-winning landscape photographer, whose photos have graced the covers of National Geographic magazine among others. The lighting of the gallery makes his photos glow. The Guggenheim Hermitage museum, currently exhibiting a collection of photos by Robert Maplethorpe, is also located within The Venetian. Although I was curious about the controversial exhibit, my cohorts were not willing to go in.	Inside The Venetian Hotel Outside The Venetian Hotel
We moved on to Caesars Palace, where marble sculptures and fountains adorn every nook and cranny of the expansive casino/hotel complex. The main fountain inside the complex (pictured at right) is a massive marble sculpture of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. Caesars Palace is also home to hundreds of shops and jewelry stores. I dragged my patient cohorts into nearly every one of them; however, the West of Sante Fe jewelry store was the most memorable. It featured case after case of good quality turquoise and silver jewelry and gold with gold quartz inlays. Caesars is also home to the gallery of Pop artist and icon, Peter Max. I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to explore Las Vegas and the surrounding area, but if you haven't been there, it is a city worth seeing at least once, even if you don't gamble.	See a virtual tour of the sculpture . The Peter Max Gallery

Here are a few hints about traveling in and out and around Las Vegas:

1. Don't wait for the hotel shuttle buses. Hail a cab. Unless you're willing to pick little old ladies by the scruff of the neck and toss them aside, you'll never make it onto a shuttle. Despite their age and the onset of osteoarthritis, these women are as ruthless as they are rude.
2. Get to the airport 3-4 hours early for your flight home. The ticket area where you check your baggage is incredibly mismanaged. Apparently the United counter, which had at least a dozen agents, has only one working baggage sticker printer. Agents had a hard time matching stickers to waiting bags. We missed our standby flight even though we were 2 ½ hours early.
3. If you're shopping for jewelry, be careful. There are a lot of nice shops with beautiful jewelry and most have reasonable prices; however, I ran into one shop, which shall remain nameless, that was trying to sell garnets set in silver at the price for rubies set in platinum. Buyer beware!

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Fall Art Tour 2006

I spent the day last Sunday visiting the working studios of artists in Mineral Point, Wis. The exhibiting artists were part of the Fall Art Tour of studios that spans from Mineral Point to Spring Green, Dodgeville, and on up to Baraboo. I had hoped to run the full circuit, but with more than 50 artists' studios included in the tour, Mineral Point was as far as I got.

Many of the studios offered demonstrations during the 3-day tour, including potter Frank Polizzi of The Mulberry Pottery (pictured at right), who gave an entertaining as well as informative demonstration of "throwing a pot." Frank's studio is open to the public 7 days a week from May 1 through October 31st. In addition to displaying his own work, he offers workshops to students at a variety of skill levels. Call Frank at 608-987-2680 for more information. Arthur Kdav's studio on Fountain St. has an interesting collection of abstract art painted on canvas stretched over pieces of welded metal rather than wood. The metal allows Arthur to create canvases in a variety shapes and to add depth to his work. The piece on the left, for example, is shaped like a fan. Others took on the shapes of shields. I met tile painter Judy Sutcliffe in the basement of the Longbranch Gallery. She moved to Mineral Point to "retire" after a 17-year career as a tile muralist in Santa Barbara, Calif. Judy is very involved in Shake Rug Alley, which offers workshops of various arts and crafts to students of all ages. Curious about Shake Rug Alley, I wandered over there, and found a willow chair workshop in progress. The two-day workshop gave participants the chance to make their own chairs under the guidance of workshop instructors. One woman participating in the workshop remarked that the weekend get-away allowed her to leave the stress of her job at the office. All-in-all, I visited 12 studios and galleries. Next year I plan to venture a little farther north to see the studios of Dodgeville and Spring Green. Check back with my event calendar later in year to find out about next year's tour.

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Need a weekend get-away? The Resort at the Mountain in Welches, Ore. will host its 18th Annual Wine Art Festival on November 11 and 12th.

Artists and galleries, including Luzon Originals, Forrest Gallery, Tim Soucy, Larry McKee, and Mitzi Miles-Kubota, will exhibit paintings, prints, metal sculptures, photography, and jewelry.

Ten wineries and microbreweries, including Willamette Valley Vineyards, Oak Knoll and St. Josephs Winery, will also participate in the event, and a portion of the proceeds from the wine tastings will benefit the Oregon Chapter of the Alzheimers Association.

The Resort is offering a special package in connection with the event. The package includes one night in a cozy Fireside Studio, dinner for two, two wine tasting passports, and a complimentary bottle of wine in your room upon check-in, starting at only $199 per couple. Attendees who stay Saturday night can stay Sunday night for an additional $79.

Get more details about the Wine Art Festival.

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If you live within a 300 hundred mile radius of Prairie du Chien, Wisc., you might consider a trip to Crawford County during the third weekend of September. A number of small towns in the county, nestled in the valleys and perched on top of the bluffs along the scenic Mississipi River, will host a variety of events Sept. 15-17, 2006. Ferryville, Wisc., will hold the Crawford County Art Festival at Sugar Creek Park.

Roughly 50 painters, sculptors, potters, weavers, and jewelry makers, are scheduled to exhibit. Janet Wissmann, who's work is featured on Fine Art Collector, and Sandy Lippitt of The Artist's Eye will be there.

If you plan to make a weekend of it, you might want to stop in Prairie du Chien to watch the Revolutionary War reenactment and in Wauzeka for the craft fair and farmer's market. Before you head home stop by the orchards of Gays Mills. The apples should be about at their peak of the season and the fall colors should be spectacular.

Learn more about where to stay and what to see here.

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