Dark Exhibition

New Jersey is currently preparing for another hurricane season, especially with the news reporting non-stop on the latest one.  Joachin could still make landfall here in the state, or may hit south of us, or pass a few hundred miles off shore, so at minimum we'll get a bunch of rain around here.  Luckily I have nothing major on the schedule for the next few days, but I have still taken care of some needed business  before the big storms arrives.

Today I stopped by the Boatworks to check out the new Dark of Night exhibition.  There will be an official reception to open the show on October 10th (which means we end up bypassing the hurricane), but it has been open to the public for about a week now.  And there is my piece, part of the 40+ works in the show.

A member who was present today had some nice things to say about my contribution, finding the approach to horror more subtle than most works there, many of which have the feel of Halloween decorations.  As I said previously, there was no intention of horror in the original woodcut, and my changes for this version were minor.  Alan Moore wrote Saga of the Swamp Thing for several years in the 1980's, widely regarded as both one of the best written and scariest comics books of the era.  In an interview at the time he mentioned that his success was partly due to taking nothing for granted.  You couldn't just, say, put vampires or werewolves in a story and conclude that since those things are scary, the story would be.  No, it was up to him (with the assistance of his artist collaborators) to actually make the story scary.  Horror is not a focus of my work, but I have long considered him an influence because of that approach to creation, making sure everything works and contributes to the art, not just settling for the easiest solution and being done with it.  Plus, I feel that things you have to think about provide a more intense reaction than the obvious.