Small Critique

It seems like it's been months since we held our critique on the traditional first Monday of the month.  A lot of the postponements have been weather related, but it finally feels like we're done with winter.  This month it was the Easter/Passover holiday, and the second Monday didn't work for me as my latest Belmar woodcut class started that night.  Molly said that Wednesday worked well for her, and I had no conflicts, so that became the plan, and we got the word out.  Or thought we did.  Of the 10 people on my e-mail list, only 3 replied at all, and those were mostly negative.  Had no idea what Molly heard from her texting group.

Driving up route 71, as I got close to our building, I figured there would be trouble.  I saw quite a few cars parked in the rough dirt field behind our building.  That only happens when there's no room in the front paved parking lot.  I was surprised to see one empty spot when I got to the front, right in the middle of the lot so it must have just been vacated when I had arrived.  I had looked at the building website this afternoon to see if anything was going on tonight and saw no performances tonight, though this weekend will have some.  Inside the building, way too many theater types, to the extent that they were occupying the basement cafeteria, the normally vacant room across the hall from the Studio, and even rehearsing in the basement hallways.  I had gotten to Ocean Grove early in case parking was difficult, so I used the extra time to get dinner, a slice across the street, and waited for our people to arrive.  And waited.  And waited.

At 7:15 I was still the only one in our room, though there was a lot of chaos out in the hall.  Then we got our first arrival, Christina, not a regular, but a friend of Molly's who comes maybe a few times a year.  Said she had just heard from Molly and that she'd be just a few minutes.  Actually she arrived around 7:30, but had cold beer which makes up for tardiness.  But that was all our attendance for the night. Christina had little new stuff to show, so brought something old (but new to us) a gray ceramic wedge (above left) that resembled a very much past its prime hunk of swiss cheese.  Molly had the above sketch on wood, the start of a diptych she's planning.  This led to a discussion of the body of work she has on display upstairs, from the WinterArts festival.

Above, Molly pulled out some other stuff, smaller drawings on wood that may be evolving into a larger piece.  The color image in the upper left corner is a book I had brought in of Romanesque fresco painting, which I had thought of when I first saw the unfinished blocks a few weeks ago.  She agreed with the relationship I was seeing, and later we would all go upstairs to see them together.  (with all the rehearsals going on, the lights were on and the building would be busy well past the point when our thing ended)

Meanwhile, I showed my most recent work, the supermarket parking lot/bricks image.  Molly knew the story from having seen it in progress for months, but hadn't seen the final version, and it was all new to Christina, so I took a few minutes to tell the tale.  They were impressed with the results.  Christina noted how different it looked between the proof right in front of her and the one hanging on the wall, the intense marks seen up close blending into value tones seen from a distance.

And that was it.  Because of the late start and our visit to the 1st floor, we actually went a little past 9 pm, but the building was still full so it didn't feel late.