Local friends, here’s your opportunity to get your “Bette Kauffman original” and help out a good cause in the process! Now, who can resist that?

“Blend on the Bayou” is the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council’s annual fundraiser. This year I have put four pieces on the silent auction. Scouts Clean Up Black Bayou Lake is one of them. The scene is a scout troupe paddling out onto the lake to participate in one of Ouachita Green’s “water clean-up” days by picking trash out of our lakes, bayous and river. Thanks, scouts! This pigment print, framed 20×16 in a black wood frame, hung in two shows in the West Monroe Mayor’s office lobby.

For the past several years, Blend on the Bayou has experimented with some slightly different formats and venues. This year, we will be back to the tradition of being on Island Drive. The date is this coming Sunday, May 5, 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. As usual, local restaurants and home chefs will have their best available for you to sample, libations and live music will also abound, plus art will be available for looking and purchasing via silent auction. So come on out and pass a great time!

I think Green Iguana (Iguana iguana) would make a great piece for an adventurous boy’s or girl’s room. This is also a pigment print, framed about 12×12 in a black wood frame. I encountered the iguana on the banks of the Sierpe River in Costa Rica. And just to be clear, I was on a pontoon boat; the iguana was on the bank of the river!

Heart of Gold II has brightened and warmed my guest bathroom for awhile, but I am finally ready to part with it. It’s a pigment print in a silver metal 12×9 frame, and I’m pretty sure that lovely white camellia was in a yard somewhere in in Monroe or West Monroe!

Blend is not just a big, fun party and fundraiser, but also a competition. As in previous years, “Best of Blend” awards will be given, one each for Restaurant and Home Cook categories.

It’s called, simply, Communion. It is unique among my offerings at Blend in that it is a genuine, hand made silver print in a vintage wood frame. The original capture was made with an analog camera on monochrome film and the print was made in a wet darkroom on the campus of the University of Iowa, where I was a student and had a reputation as an excellent printer. One of my classmates once said, “She could print a cardboard negative and make it look good!” Well, that might have been a slight exaggeration, but…

Whereas I do not miss being on my feet for hours hovering over trays of stinky chemicals, I do miss the wonder of watching the image slowly coming to life under my very eyes and recognizing that I got this one just right! I have a couple handfuls of now properly called “vintage” black & white silver prints made in that darkroom many years ago. When I left Iowa and went off to graduate school, I carefully packed them away. Now I am getting them out, matching them with vintage frames, and offering them in various ways. So this is truly a one-of-a-kind piece of art.

Buy your tickets for Blend on the NLAC website here, and I’ll look forward to seeing you on Island Drive Sunday afternoon. I’m always happy to talk about my photography.