Long Day at the Boatworks

Spent a lot of time at the Boatworks today, the day of all our railroad events.  My first few hours there was not specific to the train show, but just subbing as a gallery sitter during our standard open hours.  Today was a preview for the annual Belmar Art Walk, so I was able to give out information, and advise people about some of the exhibitors.

After that, we had a guest speaker arranged by the Belmar historical society, talking about the history of trains in Belmar, and in New Jersey in general.  It actually turned out to be quite interesting, and I wouldn't have minded it continuing, but we had to call time so all those in attendance could make it over the train station in time to see the dedication ceremony.

I wouldn't have minded seeing that either, but as the gallery sitter I had to stay behind and keep the gallery open.  Any thoughts of locking up and dashing over there were halted because we still had visitors arriving due to the Art Walk preview day.  So I used the time to put away the extra folding chairs (needed all of them for the talk) and set up extra tables to hold all the donated food for the reception.

When that ceremony wrapped up, everyone came back to the Boatworks, and our reception for the train show ended up starting early.  Luckily we had both art and historical society people bringing refreshments, so we had plenty to go around.  One of my jobs was pushing the raffle tickets.  I had my framed postcard print in the show, which had a sign promoting the raffle.  That wasn't bringing in much business, so one of our trustees took it off the wall and carried it around.  We took in more than $100 today, and with another week of the show, perhaps we'll make a little more.

At 7:00 it was time to push everyone out the door and close up.  However, I'll be back again tomorrow, putting in a shift at the Boatworks during the official Art Walk day, using the opportunity to promote some future woodcut classes, and myself in general.