Oldies But Goodies

About a week ago I mentioned taking a few minutes to reshoot jpegs of a couple of older works so that I could submit them to the big annual juried show in Belmar.  At the time I said I'd wait until I learned if  either was accepted before I wrote about them.  Because of the large number of entries this show gets, traditionally the rule has been an artist may submit up to two works, but at most one will be accepted.  I don't know if a conscious decision was made to change that, or if it's an effect of the work all being judged from online images, but this year about 20 artists had both entries chosen, including me.  So tonight you get two stories for the price of one.

My first entry was a hand colored woodcut from about 10 years ago.  In 2001 I had a small solo show at what was then called the Gallery of South Orange, which occupied a few rooms upstairs in a recreational building.  It has since been renamed for Lennie Pierro, who co-founded the gallery, and I met at my opening, the last show he saw there as he died shortly after that.  (also dying during the run of my South Orange show were a few thousand people in nearby New York City when the World Trade Center was destroyed two days after that opening)  In 2004, to mark the 10th anniversary of the gallery, all the artists who ever had solo shows there were invited to produce a new work with a theme of "10" for inclusion in a special show.  The association that made the most sense to me was the 10 pins in a game of bowling.  To emphasize the pins in my composition, I decided to show a scene from the point of view of that end of the bowling alley.  Modern alleys all have automatic pin setters and ball returns, which would make that view impossible, but a few generations back those tasks were handled by a person, who jumped down into the pit between balls.  Throw in the fact that I had a photo of my grandfather's showing a bunch of bowlers in action from the pin point of view, and the idea was all set. Had to do a little research into what typical bowling alley pits looked like, but after that it came together quickly.  My biggest concern was that the show would have a lot of bowling themed artworks, but of the 80 pieces in the show, mine was the only one.  The print has appeared in a few of my solo shows and been juried into a few group shows, but it's not one fo the 400 or so works I've shown in Belmar, so I made it one of my entries.

The other piece goes back even further.  In the late 1990's, my protege Tom Huck and I were both a few years out of grad school and looking for good opportunities to build our reputations in the print world.  I don't remember whose idea it was to organize an exchange portfolio (we had both participated in them before), but he made the suggestion that the theme be William Blake.  Blake is celebrated both as a writer and an artist (including printmaking), so both parts of his career could be referenced by pieces in the portfolio.  Eventually I found one of his longer written pieces, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake writes about some of his unusual religious beliefs.  He tells the story of an angel showing him both heaven and hell in an effort to convert him to more orthodox beliefs.  The angel leads him down a passage deep into the earth of show him hell, and Blake sees tree roots and large white spiders overhead, and giant black spiders on the ground.  When he askes the angel where hell is, he's told between the black and the white spiders.  Another part of Blake's piece is called "The Proverbs of Hell", some of which would not be out of place next to proverbs from the Bible, and some that definitely would be.  One that I thought had visual appeal was "drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead."  I envisioned this as a man plowing up a cemetery,  one in Blake's underground spider infested hell.  The biblical verses on the tombstones all mention graveyards in some way.  I don't know if the average art viewer would look at my piece and be aware of the Blake theme, but its another nice print that hadn't shown up in Belmar yet.  Now it will.

The 10th Annual Jersey Shore Juried Art Show opens March 8, 2014 at the Boatworks, with a reception from 5 to 7 pm.  The show will remain on display during regular gallery hours through April 11, 2014.