Promise Fulfilled

Early in 2014 the Belmar Arts Council asked me to take charge of one of the planned exhibitions, a show with a train theme.  One of my many responsibilities was to create a poster image to be used in all promotion of the show.  Working around many snowstorms, I drew and cut a block showing a train pulling into Belmar's station, in a style meant to resemble a vintage train poster.  People approved, and the hand colored image was used for the postcards, website, large promotional banners, and I donated the original print to be raffled for fund raising.  The banner idea is something they've been doing for a while, a commercial product printed on vinyl, weatherproof.  Usually one is made to be put on the front of the Boatworks during the run of each show, but for this exhibition they made two- one for our building, and one that was hung over by the train station itself in advance of the show and the installation of the new train station mural that we had organized.

Our current office administrator Rebecca has her creative skills in the area of fabric and fibers, has developed a way of making durable tote bags out of repurposed materials, and found that heavy duty banners worked well for this task.  This train show was up in April and May, and at the time she told me she would eventually make me a large tote bag out of one of the railroad banners, anticipating the completion for maybe late November.

After today's Studio session, I swung by the Boatworks on my way home to check up on things.  We had the opening for the latest WUF show on Saturday night, and while it was well attended, none of my stuff had sold then, or since.  About one third of the participating artists were selling jewelry, so it's that kind of crowd we get.  So no prints sold yet, but Rebecca did surprise me by having my bag ready to go.  As the photo shows, despite being hung outdoors for months, the printed image is still in very good shape- no fading or tearing.  The bag is about 31 inches wide and 26 inches tall, so it can easily hold a pile of 18" x 24" pads, a bunch of my exchange portfolio sets, or almost any of my framed works.   Should be very useful.

By the way, the other side of the bag is the continuation of the banner, so a little piece of the train station, and a bunch of text- big bold white letters against the deep blue sky showing part of the exhibition title, dates, etc.  One thing she mentioned today was that the banner design was full of visual elements, compared to most of them which have a title and image and a lot of empty space.  The way I figure it, you want good graphic design, get yourself a true graphic artist, and woodcut is the original graphic art.  We've had over 1000 years to master the concept.  The insides of her bags are lined with cloth, the pattern often relating to the theme of the outside.  For a second train show tote bag (we had two banners) she found some train themed fabric, but for mine she had cloth with sayings from Confucius and images of Chinese cardboard takeout containers.  I'd like to think it's because I dispense great wisdom, but I know it's mostly because she knows I get my Chinese takeout in Belmar.