A Very Busy Day

An artist's work never ends, and today ended up being an exceptionally long day.

The change in weather may mean that the lawn mowing schedule may finally slow down, but it hasn't happened yet.  Finished this week's cutting today and drove straight to Belmar with hopes of catching our current director in the office.  A question had come up last week of whether I would be doing more woodcut classes in 2018, but it's not my call.  I'm available, and there seemed to be a hole in the building schedule that would allow it, so I left a note and an e-mail, but heard nothing.  First I need the approval of BelmarArts, then I need students, thus my visit today.  She was back from vacation today.   Gave tentative approval and said it would go up on the website.  That's the first step.

Stopped at home for a quick snack, a change of clothes, updating and printing a document, then put some gas in the car and took off.  The destination was Kean University for the official reception for the current faculty show, which does have a few of my pieces hanging in it.  The document is a handout for this week's class, and having it ready to copy today would mean not having to do it on the class day.  The timing for today's event was good, bringing me to campus in late afternoon, after the day people have started to leave, but before the evening crowd arrives, freeing up some parking spaces one hopes.  Saw a few spaces as I passed through the lot where I usually park, but when I got to the section close to my building, the place where I usually park, it was all roped off.  No reasons that I know of (no announcements about it went out), so maybe just to annoy faculty.  At the big lot on the other side of my building I discovered that the faculty spaces there had been converted to student spaces.  Luckily my permit allows me any space, and students also leave that time of day, so I found a decent accessible spot.  Went up to the 4th floor to make my copies, then came back down to the 1st for the opening.

Initially I hadn't expected that we'd have a reception, since the last time we had a faculty show the school refused to provide refreshments.  We got an e-mail last week saying that there would be a reception and refreshments would be provided, leading me to ask questions.  Turned out that the refreshments were being provided by the three remaining full time faculty, not the school.  And that refreshment table was sparse- bottles of water, cheese and crackers, grapes, a few cookies.  Luckily, there was no one there to eat anything.  I never saw more than 8 people in the gallery at any one time, and often less.  Most of the artists weren't there either.  Usually free food lures students, but not this time.  I was told that our Dean had shown up, but I've never met him and wouldn't recognize him anyway.  One of our full time faculty mentioned that we were all invited to be part of a show down at Long Beach Island in the spring, and wanted to know if I would consider participating, since I live closer to there than most faculty.  I said yes, even though it's still about an hour away.  (I had an hour drive tonight each way, so I can handle that) My woodcut student was there of course (he practically lives in the building) and we had a former student stop by.  Didn't recognize him,  but he said he had me for a class and they did woodcuts, so that had to be me.  Said he didn't particularly enjoy that project (all they had to work with were x-acto knives), and he doesn't much like printing, but he must have liked something about it, because he kept doing them.  Showed me photos on his phone of prints  and they weren't bad, so I guess I got another convert there.  With so few people around, I never got around to taking photos of the whole gallery, but maybe I'll try to get some when I'm teaching, as the show will still be up through this weekend.

Hung around past 6 pm, hoping the Parkway would clear a bit.  Whatever may have happened, there was still plenty of traffic heading south when I left.  But the day was not over yet.  At home I got on the computer to take care of one more thing- my former student Mary had been to a talk at an arts center in Burlington and thinks it would be a great place to have some woodcut classes, and gave our contact information to the other.  I waited a few days to see if the Burlington contact was going to write me first, but it hadn't happened yet.  So tonight a quick e-mail to introduce myself and what I can offer.  Mary mentioned that the place had received a large donation of print equipment and had no  one who knew how to use it, two things that may go together.  (my two colleges have disposed of much printmaking equipment in recent years, severe cuts or elimination, and with no classes, it's hard to learn printmaking)

So pretty much this whole post is a giant to be continued.  What happens with the Belmar class, with a potential Burlington class, the show in LBI, images of the Kean gallery- all is wait and see.