My friend Regina, who first introduced me to the Working Women Artists guild (and who also is a regular reader of this blog), just won a special award. Here’s what I just read:

Regina Fry was honored on Sunday with the Zimmerman Purchase Award for her figure painting, which will become part of the permanent art collection for public display at Lansing Community College. The painting is included in the current LCC show at the Lansing Art Gallery, 113 S. Washington Square, through March.

You go, Grrrl!!!

Regina is a very, very talented artist. When I met her, she mostly did oil paintings. I remember mostly portraits, and they were pretty dark. Very well executed, excellent paintings, better than most people are capable of painting.

But: this grrl never stops learning, she takes art classes all over town, often from LCC or from Margaret Meade-Turnbull (a local artist who does the most luminescent watercolors of female models that I’ve ever seen).

Regina just keeps expanding into new artistic realms, all with a quality many of us can never achieve. She got an award for some printmaking work of hers a few years back. She now does sculpture as well, and I think she got an award for that, too. And even her paintings look really different than when I first met her, she has added a lot of light to the mix. She is growing and learning and stretching in many ways as an artist. It’s very impressive.

Mind you, she’s a very quiet and humble person. It is no surprise that I heard this through the grapevine rather than from Regina herself. She is one of those folks, that when she speaks, you should listen. She doesn’t waste words.

Yet on the other hand, Regina is very passionate about life and art. If you want to know about any art museum/gallery within reasonable traveling distance from Lansing, she knows all about it. She can tell you who is exhibiting there this year and where to stay near the museum if you want to do a frugal trip.

Congratulations, Regina.