VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!   

          Many thanks to those of you who volunteered in 2011. The VWS has become a leading arts organization in the Northeast because of you, our members who give of your time and talents.       We still have open positions or tasks that we need help with in 2012. Please join your friends/fellow members in volunteering for one of these positions:

Volunteer for Event Announcements

• Job Description: Email event announcements (6-8 in 2011) to identified news carriers (regional newspapers, radio stations).
• Purpose: To invite the Public to our exhibitions and public demonstrations and to promote the VWS through announcements of our events in regional newspapers and radio stations.
• Note:   Materials are already developed such as a press release template and a list of regional news carriers. No prior experience needed.
• Requirements: Must have email capability.

Check out our new website @  www.vermontwatercolorsociety.com.

Being a new site, we have tested and retested it until we were sure it was perfect. The site has been live for about a week we have received more than one email letting us know it wasn't EXACTLY perfect. So please, as you use it, let us know if something just isn't working correctly.

Here are some of the things you will find on the new site:

• Gallery pages and updates are FREE through the end of 2012.   We want to encourage all of our members to have a gallery page and to keep it up to date with current works. Click here  to set up a new gallery page. Click here to renew your gallery images or bio.
• Find fellow members easily
  A full member listing is updated monthly. It can be viewed by Hub or by last name simply by clicking on the column heading.
• New Hub section
  Everything you could possibly want related to your Hub can be found in this section. You will find the Hub tab at the top of the VWS home page.
• Blog
  Each Hub has their own blog to communicate to fellow Hub members.

Don Dalton will continue to be our web administrator. Please send all your gallery information to Don via the website forms.  Cynthia (Cindy) Crawford has gratefully passed this on to Don.  

Thanks to the Board of Directors, Cindy Crawford and Don Dalton for all of your help. Thanks to our Webmaster, Eric Gottesman, for his fine work on the site.

The common term "Renaissance man" is used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects. This term definitely describes Don Dalton, a VWS signature member who lives in Chester with his wife and two beautiful daughters. Don has been and continues to be invaluable as our web administrator.

Don grew up in Buffalo, NY, but has lived in various parts of the country, including California, Colorado, Florida, Cape Cod, and NYC. He was a cook/chef for much of his adult life and worked in fine dining. In 1996, Don started graduate school at the Rhode Island School of Design becoming a landscape architect, working in that field since graduation. Right now, he is a stay-at-home dad who works from home and takes care of the two girls, a one-year old and a three-year old. "In such a situation, finding uninterrupted time to paint requires me to work in the very early hours of the morning," Don says.

Dalton began painting in oils while in high school, and during that time, he won second prize in the Holland (NY) Tulip Festival art show. He received a scholarship to attend the Portland School of Art, but he was young, foolish and stubborn and didn't go because of the English requirement. (Ironically, he said that he studied quite a bit of that later).

Don stopped painting shortly after high school and joined the Navy. He served four years as a hospital corpsman and lab technician, and ended up running the microbiology lab at Key West Naval Hospital. After the Navy, Dalton studied philosophy and received a BA from Colorado State University. It was during his last year at CSU that he started painting again.

Don studied oil painting at the Art Students League of New York, the Cape Museum of Fine Art, and at the Boston Museum School. He studied watercolor at Rhode Island School of Design with Tom Sgouros.

Dalton is a member of the Southern Vermont Art Center and the Copley Society (Boston), where he's won the designation of "Copley Artist. He's also won two Juror's Choice awards and one Honorable Mention at the Copley Society, all for watercolor paintings. This year Don has paintings in the National Watercolor Society Open Show and the New England Watercolor Society show.

Don says, "Lately my paintings have developed to reflect two related themes. One is of emerging or coming into clarity, and the other is one of clarity or insight. Although the paintings are primarily of landscapes, the real subject is based on expressing a feeling which is generally only loosely related to the apparent subject matter."

He continued, "(The subject) may in fact be much more closely related to, and inspired by, a piece of music, for example a movement in a quartet or piano concerto. I've explored somewhat the aesthetics behind painting and so far what I've come up with is that a painting is an expression of a harmonic feeling, like a complex chord hardly able to be expressed in words. That chord is the statement of the painting."

To see more of Don's work go to: dondaltonarts.com.