Cold Critique

We managed to miss having a critique last month, which is rare.  Going two months without one, well that has never happened since we started this thing, so after bypassing the proximity to New Year's Day, we went ahead and scheduled a January Crit.  Molly and I put out word through our usual channels, but we had gotten no responses from anyone.  So at 7 pm, I still didn't know if anyone would be coming to participate.  However, I had brought in a loaf a good bread, so I was there, and a few people did drift in.  So we moved over to the cafeteria and got things started.

Molly wanted to go first and put out the latest version of her turtle images, started because she believed a friend and a strong interest in turtles.  Turned out not to be the case, but they are still interesting images.  Wider range of value now compared to the ink drawings on glass we had seen before.  And then she ran off.

I ended up being the next artist to show.  Above, my piece on the right, an etching from my junior year in college.  I will be showing this in a show in Belmar next week, a salon style show where I'll have the opportunity to talk about it.  This piece isn't really relevant to anything I'm doing right now, but I have it, haven't yet shown it in Belmar, and I can talk about the process, so it will be my entry.  I'll save the story until that show starts.  The other piece above is from our regular Tim.  He told us that the painting was inspired by an NPR broadcast, talking about religious conflicts.

The last thing we looked at came from Mary G, images on a background created from used tea bags, something she's been doing for a while.  She was not sure where to take it from here, while everyone else thinks it's pretty much done.  My opinion is that she could add narrative content if she wants, but it's already working as a purely formalist composition, so unless she has something specific to say, call it done.  So our discussion ended up being more about options for hanging it in a show.

We had another visitor who none of us recognized and seemed confused.  We did invite her to stay for the crit, but she was looking for a meeting of some kind.  After further questioning we found she was looking for an AA meeting at Q Spot, so we gave she instructions as to how to reach it, which requires finding a different building entrance.  There for the critique (but with no art to show) was my former student Mary.  The new sink is still not quite hooked up, but she hopes soon and invited us to use her new studio space for a future meeting.  And then Molly returned, so we spent a few minutes showing her the things she missed while she was away.  And after that we called it a night.