Back to the Studio

About an hour before last night's critique I got a call from Molly.  Often when this happens it's her telling me that something has come up and she won't be coming to the crit.  Not this time.  She was giving me a heads up that she had been in the Studio earlier in the day and all the works we had in the WinterArts festival show up on the first floor since February was now piled up in our space.  A little bit of a surprise since we had not been informed of this in advance.  I wasn't sure where my packing materials were, so I grabbed a few big black contractor bags from a box I had and brought them with me last night.  Before everyone arrived, I put my framed pieces inside the bags to provide some protection until I had time to do something better.  I was off from school today for election day, meaning I had that time this morning.

So late this morning I drove up to the Studio, bringing with me a big piece of bubble wrap that I found, and the large portfolio case that I use to transport and store student work from my classes.  My large Studio table is my best place to review student work, so I got that out of the way first, looking at charcoal drawings from last week's class, and photographing a few particularly good ones pinned to my portable display board.

Then I moved on to the recently returned framed work.  I verified today what I had expected- it was cleared off the walls so they could begin decorating for Christmas.  I heard from one person that the original plan had been to send e-mails out in advance, but Herb didn't want to wait to get the walls emptied and start installing the wreathes.  No artwork was harmed, so no big deal.  The wires used to hang them were still attached, but I was able to tuck them back and will remove them another time.  between the bags and bubble wrap, I secured everything and carried them out to my car.

While I was still there I went on to another task.  It was announced recently that the Member Salon show that will open 2016 at the Belmar Arts Council will have a theme of old shoes.  It's a subject I have dealt with in the past, but could I find one of those prints?  For example, my Fourth of July series includes a diptych from a trip back to New Jersey when I bought new work shoes and a new wallet, replacing old leather with new.  The shoe image would be perfect, except that a search of my boxes of blocks showed that is one of the ones lost to Sandy.  Next one in mind was a saint print dating back to Carbondale, St Lambert, also featuring a leather work shoe, and the saint blocks are stored in the Studio, too. Also a block that seems to have been lost to Sandy,  However, I suspected that I had multiple copies of the print itself at home, and when I checked later that night, I did.  I'll save the image and story for when we get closer to the show.

Big Crowd

The month can come around very fast sometimes.  I realized we were about to enter November, called Molly, and she decided to go for a group meeting today, the first Monday of the month.  So we got the word out as we do, and we got enough positive responses to assume it would happen.

And the crowd did show up.  We had about 10 artists show up, with 7 bringing art to present.  In the above photo, (top row) left to right are some of my sketches for a new supermarket print, and four woodcuts from Mary L., (bottom row) a painting from Tim, mixed media prints from Mary G, and Christina's rebellious product from a painting/wine drinking group.

Above and below are drawings from Molly.  Up top are blown up versions of doodles, an attempt to make turtles sexy and expressive, which she surprisingly pulls off. Below, sketches for possible t-shirt ideas.

Below, Margery presented a new ceramic piece with more colorful glazing than we typically see from her.  In the background, Christina's painting again of what was supposed to be a still life involving books.

Though Molly missed last month's meeting, she heard that the idea of collaborations was well liked, so we put that into the messages we sent out.  And this time we had a few people take things from other artists to work on.  Results will be seen here when they turn up.  Last time I offered up something to the group for this process, it took two years to get the first collaboration, so keep that in mind.