A Change of Season

Just a few days ago, we had single digit wind chills around here, and I found myself shivering on short walks from my car to whatever destination I was heading to. Today, we got back up into the 60's, a situation that must be taken advantage of when it comes around in early January.

Took care of many unrelated errands, but got in some art stuff, too. In the morning I framed a piece to submit for the upcoming annual BAC Members' Salon. Despite years of effort, the BAC has never been able to get the same kind of popularity for its critique group as the one that meets in my Studio. However, allow people to put the work up on the walls for a few weeks of exhibition, and they'll come out in droves. By the end of today's intake, about 3 dozen artists had brought work in. It will get hung early in the week and on Thursday night we'll have the Salon- every artist who shows up will have the opportunity to present their work and take comments and questions- basically a critique group. I don't want to waste a major work in a minor show like this, so I decided to submit the St Benno print that I just finished last month. I could have swapped it out with another saint in a frame, but I decided to borrow a slightly larger frame, but with a window mat cut to similar proportions. After three other stops, I dropped by the Boatworks and dropped it off. Didn't bother to take photos of the framing process, but I'll post photos of the framed piece when I shoot the show next week.

From there I drove to the Studio. I can't finish my ongoing boardwalk print series if I don't get started on the remaining prints, so today was devoted to getting something going. I brought some of my notebooks and collected reference clippings of the past few years, to see what developed. Of the planned themes from my original list, the next likely one will either be a general daytime scene or boardwalk amusement rides. For the latter I will need to do a bit of on site research, but to get going on the first I just need a good background setting to build around. Although I have generally avoided using real locations for most of these prints so far, I have considered using some of Asbury Park's iconic structures as background. On one hand, there are people who are predisposed to buying artwork that features Asbury's famous structures, and plenty of local places that like to feature it. On the other hand, Asbury's boardwalk area buildings are pretty much an art cliche around here, and I'd be adding my print to that huge pile. But while I considered that, I figured I may as well use the beautiful day to collect some references. So I walked up Main to the ocean, turned north, and walked through the remains of the Casino and onto Asbury's boardwalk. I continued walking until I reached Convention Hall, at the northern end of the built up boardwalk area. I hiked out over the sand to down near the water's edge and took some shots looking back toward the boardwalk, such as the one above.

From there I walked back through Asbury toward Main, alongside the lake. I detoured to Cookman Ave to check out a gallery opening. A photography gallery has moved to a new larger space in its same building, and tonight was the debut. Between the permanent and portable walls, there were maybe a couple of hundred photos on display...and the majority of them were photos of Asbury's landmarks in various states of decay. On the first Saturday of the month, Asbury galleries will often have coordinated receptions, but after checking out a few other spaces on the street I found nothing new, so I walked back to my car in Ocean Grove and drove home.