Back in Class

I had scheduled a new round of woodcut classes at the Belmar Arts Council to begin shortly after the end of my college classes.  Problem was that as of the first night, despite several people contacting me and expressing interest, I only had one student, not enough to be worth running.  But then a week later one of those expressing interest earlier asked if he could join the class.  I put it back on the schedule and we advertised it again.  Soon I was officially up to two, a number I've worked with before, and had another inquiry, but with the office closed since Saturday, I didn't know for sure what I'd be getting.  But I knew it would be running.

A couple of complications this morning.  A rainstorm was coming in ahead of schedule, meaning my moving supplies and print examples around was about to get a little more difficult.  Even bigger, the President was coming to the area today to tour progress on rebuilding the shore, ending with a speech in Asbury.  Word was out that the planned itinerary could result in shutting down many of the area main roads for hours, including everything around the Studio.  Since I had a lot of materials for my workshop stored there, I had to get up fairly early to make sure I could get there, and just as important, get out again.  Well, I did all that and went home to take care of a few things.  Had not heard one way or the other through the afternoon about my final class list, but I knew I was going anyway.

I got to the Boatworks plenty early and started unloading the car, which took several trips and got me wet as the rain had chosen that moment to start up again.  My students started to arrive, and it turned out I had four people for the class.  Three were brand new, so much of the first class was me doing the usual first week routine- showing them some prints from the collection before getting them started on some blocks of their own.  (Mary, back taking the class for the 5th time, kept herself busy at a separate table with a new project of her own)  Also as usual, I was too busy displaying prints and demonstrating stuff to have time to take any photos of the students in progress, so above is a photo of some of the mess that was left behind at the end of class.  We had three tables going, so it was quite a lot to clean up at the end of the night.