A Small Gathering

Regulars come and go from our critiques from month to month; everyone is busy and sometimes that means on our planned nights.  Eight people turned up tonight, including some who have missed the last few meetings.  Still, that's enough for us to have an enjoyable evening of art and discussion.

When I arrived Molly had already set up something new right in the middle of the room, and it seemed best to start with her so that we could move her piece before looking at the others.  What you see above is print runs of two more in her series of little robots, which she expects to need for an upcoming show in Rahway, details of which I'll post tomorrow.

It is the custom in our group for each person who presents to pick the next person to talk about, and Molly selected Mary, who brought the finished version of her multi-block relief print.  We all saw the black line part of this image previously, and I saw some of the blue color block evolving during the last round of woodcut classes, but this was the first time we saw it all together.  There is a lot more detail in the print itself than can be shown in this photo of the print under glass.

Sheilagh, fresh off her painting prize in Belmar, brought in three current paintings.  There was a bit of confusion as to the medium- we all figured they were encaustic, due to both their surface quality and her talk in the past of how much the medium excited her, but she insisted they are acrylics.  Either way, people are liking the effects she's achieving.

Up on the big board we had two pieces from Ani, bringing in the colorful piece just to show everyone how it ended up, and seeking input on two in progress- the piece with the spiral shell and an even more abstract painting attached to the back of that one.  Underneath are a couple of sketchbooks from Harriet, who has committed to a sketch a day project for 2013.  We passed them around so that everyone could flip through them.

I have spent the past 3 weeks painting at the Algonquin theater, averaging 6 or 7 hours per week, so I have no prints to show.  Instead, I pulled up a few images on the camera.  They are unedited and so kind of dark, but at least it gives some idea of what I've been up to.

Looks like we have one more month of Thursday meetings, then the spring semester will be over and we'll likely go back to Mondays.  Maybe by then I'll have some new art to show.