Josh Ritchie and Art Source Gallery

I was pretty impressed by two whimsical artists at Art Source Gallery when I went to First Thursday last week. One was Josh Ritchie, who does cool wire sculptures of robots, super heroes and ladies in what appear to be muu muus. Josh excels at creating eccentric characters. The titles for some of his pieces were along the lines of, "Maybe I am the normal one in my family."

The other artist I really liked there was Judy Deam. She does watercolors of what look to be 1940s- or '50s-era toys. There was a Keystone cop, a couple of carnival prize dogs and a man called "Rodeo Joe" riding a tractor. I was impressed by how vivid the colors were -- the reds were richer than I remember seeing in most watercolors, and the pastel aqua greens and blues were bright and cheery.

Edit: Though Josh Ritchie and Judy Deam both allowed me to post pictures of some of their pieces, I lost the pics in a little snafu when I was reorganizing things on Google, and I decided to reassess my idea of posting photos even when I had permission. I like drawing pictures and I feel better about posting them than photos, so I think that's what I'll stick with.