Very Busy Basement

This afternoon was as nice as you could expect from a day in March, especially this winter so far.  For the second month in a row we had postponed our regular critique because of snow on the original day, but that was long melted.  Took care of errands in the afternoon, then drove up to the Studio, hoping to catch the management still there to ask more about the flood.  They were already gone, so I took a quick walk across the road to get a slice for dinner, and grabbed a free copy of the Tri-City News from the rack in the pizzeria on my way out.  Still not sure how safe the Studio is right now, so I ate in the basement cafeteria while looking through the paper.  Tucked it under my arm while I grabbed more stuff from the car and almost lost my grip on it.  Refolded the tabloid to put it back together and realized I had just seen some of my art.  In their picks for the week ahead (issue published March 6th) my Belmar woodcut class got a nice write up.  The column's writer, Hannah Walker. credits woodcut as being an artform with a thousand year history "partly because it looks pretty damn cool".  Well I'm not going to argue with that.  (clicking on the photo should enlarge it enough to read the actual article) The print is one of my older train pieces, last seen in last year's Art on the Edge, and it even got credited to me, not a given with that paper.

Since our regular space is not fit for gathering at the moment, we had been giving the building's blessing to use the cafeteria, which we have occasionally used in the past.  However I did have to venture into our room to grab the portable tack board, which luckily is kept up on one of those concrete ledges. Complicating matters was that our hallway was filled with a decorated arch, a table with rolled up programs, colorful tablecloths, people dressed in formal clothes- looked like a wedding was going to be held outside our Studio door, and that turned out to be the case.  Might have blocked access to our second door as well, so another benefit of the critique being relocated for the night.  Got the tack board and got out of there before things started up.

As for the critique itself, we had 6 participants, all bringing art.  In the above photo, top row is a mixed media digital painting from Mary's daughter (I think her name is Katie, but I'll have to check on that), and my full color first version of my postcard print, underneath that some of Molly's cat and mouse linocuts in various states, Margery's ceramic goat, and a four color print from Mary's recent group folio edition (finished version of the one we saw last month).

Besides loaning me a couple of older pieces to demonstrate for my 3D class, Lisa brought in four sculptures.  Above, another large sandwich to follow up her hoagie in Belmar, a hedgehog and a shrimp ring.  Below, a goose hangs from the rafters above the cafeteria.

With only six artists and not going too far beyond the timer, we actually finished on time.  The wedding crowd had started breaking up, so we were able to get the tack board back in there easily (Molly's first look at the Studio since the flood).  She expressed a hope that in April we will finally get back to our first Monday regular schedule.  It's all up to the weather.