This Saturday we celebrated the 20-year anniversary of Women for Wine Sense at the Grand Event held at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in St. Helena, California. The sun was shining down on my paintings and I had the opportunity to celebrate with a great group of women from across the United States, several from Texas and Rochester, New York.
We lunched in the barrel room where huge wine casks lined the walls. Each cask has a bronze plaque mounted on the front to honor a different person who made wine history. I passed by Dr. Harold Olmo’s plaque. This took me back to when I first started painting vineyards and to my connection with this rich history. Those first vineyards I painted belonged to Dr. Harold Olmo, who was a grape breeder and viticulturist, who played a key role in the development of the California wine industry starting in the 1930s.
I know his daughter, Jeanne-Marie Olmo. I was looking for a safe place to paint and Jeanne invited me to paint on her family’s farm. It’s a diverse landscape that includes a creek, alfalfa fields, and an organic vineyard. Jeanne invited me to come and go as I please.
Jeanne is a fantastic cook and a warm fun-loving person who welcomed me. She and so many women have supported my artistic aspirations, like Amy who this weekend helped my schlep my paintings and prints because of my wounded back. And who edits my copy so she can and does enthusiastically tell the story of the artist and the story of the paintings. This Saturday I felt fortunate to meet even more fantastic women.
Women and Wine Sense is a wonderful organization of women who work in the wine industry or who are wine aficionados. I wanted to give back. So I made Women and Wine Sense beneficiaries of my company’s “Giving Forward” program as a way to share some of my growing success, successes that have been helped along by many women, by many people, in my life.
Sipping, Savoring, and Sharing with Women for Wine Sense
1 This Saturday we celebrated the 20-year anniversary of Women for Wine Sense at the Grand Event held at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in St. Helena, California. The sun was shining down on my paintings and I had the opportunity to celebrate with a great group of women from across the United States, several from Texas and Rochester, New York.
We lunched in the barrel room where huge wine casks lined the walls. Each cask has a bronze plaque mounted on the front to honor a different person who made wine history. I passed by Dr. Harold Olmo’s plaque. This took me back to when I first started painting vineyards and to my connection with this rich history. Those first vineyards I painted belonged to Dr. Harold Olmo, who was a grape breeder and viticulturist, who played a key role in the development of the California wine industry starting in the 1930s.
I know his daughter, Jeanne-Marie Olmo. I was looking for a safe place to paint and Jeanne invited me to paint on her family’s farm. It’s a diverse landscape that includes a creek, alfalfa fields, and an organic vineyard. Jeanne invited me to come and go as I please.
Jeanne is a fantastic cook and a warm fun-loving person who welcomed me. She and so many women have supported my artistic aspirations, like Amy who this weekend helped my schlep my paintings and prints because of my wounded back. And who edits my copy so she can and does enthusiastically tell the story of the artist and the story of the paintings. This Saturday I felt fortunate to meet even more fantastic women.
Women and Wine Sense is a wonderful organization of women who work in the wine industry or who are wine aficionados. I wanted to give back. So I made Women and Wine Sense beneficiaries of my company’s “Giving Forward” program as a way to share some of my growing success, successes that have been helped along by many women, by many people, in my life.
