Yesterday I had a privilege of attending an opening of a group show in Atlas Gallery on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. It is one of the most prestigious contemporary art galleries in Chicago.

One of the artists is Vladimir Pailodze, whom I have an honor to call my friend. He is extremely talented artist. His paintings are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. They are radiant, warm, very kind with a great sense of a humor.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to another brilliant artist - Sergey Tyukanov. His paintings overflow with boundless fantasy: sausages and hotdogs fighting with human kind, flying castles which look like shoes or half moon, high fashion for cats made with kitchen utensils, fish bones, musical instruments, alarm clock and fruits. Sergey’s exquisite and delicate watercolors and etchings are so full of details that gallery supplied a magnifying glass for better viewing. We talked and talked. About things like making art is process of constant self-education, how hard and dreadful it can be to actually produce what is called art, at what moment the work comes to a finished state… It was a great pleasure.

The show was a great success. The gallery could not even fit all the public. The population of shrimp was severely depleted and the barman seemed to have four hands pouring out all the wine and Champaign.

Vladimir Pailodze in a heated discussion in front of his gorgeous canvas “Daydreams” (or just “Aunty Sonya”).

Sergey Tyukanov arguing about landing spot for his Flying Shoes Castle.

Excitement of the public flew high. After floating in rivers of Champaign and splashing in chocolate fountain some of distinguished representatives of the honored public could not contain themselves and had to be carried away from an unbearable light of the Great Art.

I’m back from my travels to Greece. It was fun. Sometimes even with a mild extreme: getting bounced wall to wall in a storm in a small ferry, fighting with a burglar in the middle of the night, and my all time favorite - driving on narrow winding roads with a stone wall on one side and bottomless ravine on the other side. Santorini was the most beautiful island of all we have been to. It is a crown jewel of all Greek islands. It is worth forgetting about other islands and going to Santorini only. I made quite a few photos: over 10,000 in fact. I wish I could have spent more time on photography there, but I unashamedly wasted my time on a beach and simply enjoyed the view without viewfinder. Sorting and developing my photos from the trip will take some time and I will be posting them on my website irregularly…

I will be traveling to Greece for the next 2 weeks or so. We will be doing some Greek islands “hopping”: Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Santorini and some small islands in between. I don’t think I will have access to Internet there. I promise to answer your emails and get to your print orders as soon as I get back home.

After a couple years of stagnation with my old website I finally decided to redesign it. Well, I kept the actual design pretty much the same, I think it is good. All I changed is the idea of the website. Before the idea was “extended business card” and now the idea is “visual diary”. I do not advertise my website and hence there are not so many visitors. According to the website logs the only loyal visitor is… me. I am the one browsing all these images. And looking at some of the old photos I discovered that I started to forget how and why I made them. And I decided to write a little story for each photo. One by one they will form a visual diary. There will be something to remember later on…