Another Year Ends, and not too soon

Not one of my most productive art years ever for a variety of reasons.  But probably not my worst either.  Began normal enough, but then there were things like the arrival of Covid, my college deciding to change formats, and for fun, a brain tumor, that last one one of the lesser problems.  But I'll try to stick with established format.

Prints- Actually got a few made this year.  After showing my old Moving Day (deer) print in a local show there was a demand for more copies, but one  problem- the block was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.  Solution- recut the block and make more. Result was pretty good  and the print brought in some extra cash.  Also created a new color print based on memories of Vesuvio, a new Covid inspired supermarket print, the christmas card, among other things. 

Shows- Covid took a hit on exhibitions in general, closing down many galleries for months (some still closed) so there just weren't many place showing art.  Got a few things up on walls anyway.  The big surprise was from Jackie, former studio partner (who was always more Molly's friend).  She had some empty walls in her gallery/gift shop in Ocean Grove and I had nothing else going on.  What she wanted was supermarket prints and those were available so we got it done in about a day. Knowing what kind of tourism Ocean Grove gets, I figured there was good possibilities. Of course. that was before Covid.  I don't even know how many days the gallery was open. My Belmar show was shorter, but both artistically and financially successful. 

Firsts- Two new experiences.  My college friend Jenny got the idea that the popularity of jigsaw puzzles during the pandemic could be an artistic outlet for my woodcut prints, and since I  couldn't say she was wrong, we decided to pursue it.  Made a bunch of prototypes, and they looked good, so now we need to play with formats and pricing. and see if we can figure out where to go with it. The other new thing was that my former student Amy used her extended time off (music was also hit hard by Covid) to learn some video editing and decided to take on the creation of lyric video for one of her recent songs.  For the video part, she asked the public to create images related to dozens of phrases in the song and somehow she got it together into a video.  

Studio- For various reasons, not as much as I would normally like to do, at least partly because I can't get up to the Studio.  And that is a mix of the place being closed down to much from the Covid thing, and from the sudden discover of a brain tumor, which as caused all kinds of complications in my life,  How that gets resolves remains to seem. but it will end up being posted here.