I’m very excited about my newest feature in Montana Quarterly magazine.  Montana Quarterly is a very quality magazine available online or wherever fine magazines are sold.

This is just a summary of my monthly Newsletter! To see the entire newsletter please click here. Greetings from the Road!

I’m just about done with my summer tour and wanted to take a moment to announce our August winner and give you some exciting updates! 

SEE LISA and Her HISTORIC MAP PAINTINGS in the Fall issue of the 
MONTANA QUARTERLY magazine!

I’m excited to announce that I will be featured in the next edition of Montana Quarterly!  I will be sure to post links to the article as soon as it’s published!

FALL SHOW SCHEDULE! Tell Your Neighbors, Tell Your Friends! A hand-painted historic map is a memorable GIFT!

Issaquah Salmon Days, Issaquah WA (waiting list) October 24-26:
Best of the Northwest, Seattle WA November 21,22,23:
Custer Show, Spokane WA November 28,29,30:
Under the Big Sky Holiday Festival, Missoula MT
December 14: Made Fair, Missoula MT

BOOK REVIEW OF THE MONTH   There’s only one book on my list this month…and I am OH SO excited to read it! This is a thrilling tale in to the BLACK MARKET of ANCIENT DOCUMENTS! “The story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him
 
Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers—both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.
 
Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief —until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library. The Map Thief delves into the untold history of this fascinating high-stakes criminal and the inside story of the industry that consumed him.
 
Acclaimed reporter Michael Blanding has interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and shares the fascinating histories of maps that charted the New World, and how they went from being practical instruments to quirky heirlooms to highly coveted objects. Though pieces of the map theft story have been written before, Blanding is the first reporter to explore the story in full—and had the rare privilege of having access to Smiley himself after he’d gone silent in the wake of his crimes. Moreover, although Smiley swears he has admitted to all of the maps he stole, libraries claim he stole hundreds more—and offer intriguing clues to prove it. Now, through a series of exclusive interviews with Smiley and other key individuals, Blanding teases out an astonishing tale of destruction and redemption.
 
The Map Thief interweaves Smiley’s escapades with the stories of the explorers and mapmakers he knew better than anyone. Tracking a series of thefts as brazen as the art heists in Provenance and a subculture as obsessive as the oenophiles in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Blanding has pieced together an unforgettable story of high-stakes crime.”

AUGUST RAFFLE WINNER

Thank you for your interest in me and sharing your love for maps and art. It is an honor to share my story with you!

Everyone who subscribes to the newsletter is AUTOMATICALLY eligible for the drawing! The raffle winner is determined by a random number generator.  Everyone has a chance to win each month. Please sign up for my newsletter here!   Please sign up for my newsletter here!

It sure has been a whirlwind of a month!
With two more weekends of shows I’m preparing to say good-by to a wonderful summer with some hikes and “hello” to a new season of map projects!
I wish you all the most wonderful of Augusts.  Happy trails until we meet again!

“Despite the way they express a shared geography, maps are tools of the imagination first, mediating a relationship between an individual and a place” -Michael Blanding, The Map Thief

To see the entire newsletter please click here.

Tell your neighbors! Tell your friends! 
July 4 Conrad Mansion Ice Cream Social, Kalispell MT
July 11-13 Yellowstone Art Museum Summerfair, Billings MT
July 18-20 Hockiday Art Museum, Art in the Park Kalispell MT
July 28-29 Art Fair on the Green, LaCrosse WI
August 1-3 Sweet Pea, Bozeman MT
August 8-10 Huckleberry Days, Whitefish MT
August 15-17, VALA Eastside, Redmond, WA
September 4-7, Western Design Conference, Jackson WY
October 4-5: Issaquah Salmon Days, Issaquah WA (waiting list)
October 24-26 Best of the Northwest, Seattle WA

PRESS RELEASE (Photos and contacts below the release)

Artist Lisa Middleton, originally from La Crosse, Wisconsin, has been painting historic Mississippi River maps for more than a decade and her maps can be found in homes and businesses throughout the United States.  Middleton will be sharing her historic map paintings and their stories at the ART FAIR ON THE GREEN, UW-La Crosse Campus, July 26-27, 2014. Her exhibit will include hand-painted historic maps of the Mississippi River and the Wisconsin/Iowa Territory, as well as the Old Northwest in various media.

“I like to work on maps with history; maps of places people love; maps that have stories,” Middleton said. She scours library collections and old bookstores for interesting maps, enlarges them at very high resolutions, and paints them using watercolor and oil pastels.

Middleton’s favorite maps include authentic depictions of wagon roads, native villages and railroads. If a large river, such as the Missouri or the Mississippi is described as “source unknown,” so much the better!

Many different things can make a map interesting to customers who often spend a great deal of time browsing through the maps, according to Middleton. Sometimes places on the map have disappeared… like “Waterproof” on Glazier’s 1887 ribbon map.  Sometimes maps represent hopeful guessing, such as the Northwest passage created by the Missouri River on her 1732 De l’Isle map, “Carte de la Louisiane”.

“Sometimes a map brings back a precious memory for a customer, or maybe there is just something about the colors or the location that ‘lifts the spirit,” as one map buff described it. Lisa offers her lively website at  www.greatriverarts.com for those interested in exploring map-related books, access to large galleries of Lisa’s historic map paintings, or an insight into the artist’s life.

In addition to historic maps of the Mississippi River Valley, Middleton’s exhibit will include a large selection of historic maps from the Old Northwest, and many other American and International locations from the Middle East to Norway and France. Visitors will find original paintings, giclee reproductions, and gift prints. She is also happy to accept commissions, with appointments available by visiting the contact page at www.greatriverarts.com

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CONTACT INFORMATION
Pat@greatriver.com
888-255-7726
Great River Publishing
Or Email the Artist:  Fineart@greatriverarts.com
www.greatriverarts.com