Studio Building Business

 Very sunny today, but also very cold.  The temperature didn't go up any it seemed, so I decided to go up to the Studio anyway.  No problem since I would be indoors.  Today I remembered to bring my photo ID with me, so I could go in the front door.  My first stop was there on the 1st floor, to see the works I had on the wall.  Still there, as I expected.  However, not much other work still up on the walls.  Most of the tenants seem to have taken the offer to take their work down before the Punk Rock Flea Market, so from what had been 13 artists originally, only 3 of us had work still up.  What did this mean?  Not up to me.

Dropped off my stuff in my space and then went to the office.  Jeanne did not know much about the weekend activity, except that she heard it was successful.  That I agreed with, at least in terms of people coming and going- I saw a lot of people walking around and cars moving in the back parking lot (have windows the face it) and on the occasions that I was upstairs I saw a lot of people walking around.  As far as selling things, neither Jeanne or I know how that did.   She admitted that they didn't do a great job promoting the open studios, especially what we had in the basement, and maybe next time she would do more.  As for my work, for now she wants me to keep it up on the wall, despite all the space around it.  Below is a photo of my pieces as they look right now, but there is very little other work on display.

I don't know if they will be happy to keep having so many empty walls, or if they will look for more work to put up, or will try to get the next show in there (something involving photography she thinks) sooner, but for now my stuff is still up there.

After that I went to my space to get some work done.  That meant more drawing on my latest Robert Johnson block, which is for his song, "Cross Road Blues."  As usual, I won't be showing it here until the drawing is more done, but I'll tell a story here.  The cross roads is a major part of the Robert Johnson story, both is music and life.  In music it is arguably his most famous song, especially after often played covers by Cream, and later by a solo Eric Clapton (who also named some foundations after it, and his box set from the 80's), and probably covered by others.  However, possibly just as well known is the story that says Johnson went to a cross roads in his area to make a deal with the devil- trading his soul for guitar skills.  No one really knows what went down, except that he had terrible guitar skills before, and later he could play brilliantly and also wrote blues classics that were covered by many artists of the rock era.  

The story may be even more famous than the song.  When I had the opening for my earlier Johnson woodcuts last fall (same show mentioned before, still up on the walls), more of those who viewed it knew the story about selling his soul than knew any of his songs.  However, it is his most famous song, and for that reason, I decided to avoid it during the first batch of prints I produced.  But more recently I had an idea for an image that related to the famous guitar player and song writer that did not show a cross roads (or any road) or the devil or any person who could be interpreted as the devil.  Suddenly I had something that was not likely done by anyone else already.  As a bonus, I didn't need anyone else to pose for it, so it would be easy to do.  I was not in a hurry to do another print in the series, but we had an open studio last week and I needed something easy to work on, and that fit the bill.  

What I worked on today was putting a figure in the background, based on a figure drawing I had done almost 15 years ago, but saw recently when looking for a face to be my nurse in the blood draw block, and I knew it would fit well in the space I had.  I don't know where the original drawing is, but there are photos of it available on my computers, and so last night I did a quick sketch at home.  Today I used a mirror to draw a larger version on my block.  While this was going on I was listening to a disc I got from my friend Doug, with albums from Hans Rotenberry (of the Shazam) and Brad Jones, and from Alejandro Escovedo, which I have written about on this blog back in June of 2022 if you want to know more.