The SOMA Artists Studio Tour

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details from the South Orange Maplewood Studio Tour website:

The Pierro Gallery of South Orange and 1978 Maplewood Arts Center are proud to present the seventh annual Artists Studio Tour on Sunday June 6, 2010, from 11a-5p.
The towns of South Orange and Maplewood New Jersey are a hub for many artists, arts venues, restaurants, shops and boutiques. The annual studio tour attracts hundreds of visitors to the studios and galleries of our local talent.
This unique exhibit gives you rare access to the artists and their working environments, where you can view and purchase work directly from the artist. Commercial venues and alternative exhibition spaces provide extended exposure for the artists and businesses in the two towns.
The South Orange & Maplewood Artists Studio Tour features over 50 artists. Meet them, see their work, and celebrate the vibrant local arts community.
The Art Tour shuttle is free with a tour ticket.
Beginning at either train station at 11:00, the Art Shuttle will follow the tour route that is printed in green on the tour map.
Visitors can hop on and off where they like, when they like, as often as they like.
An Art Shuttle should pass by each shuttle stop every 30 minutes, so visitors can plan their day.
Map/Tickets are available on the shuttle for $10.

Although I have displayed my work at 1978 during the past couple of studio tours,  this year I will be in my own studio where you can see my working space and studio materials.  I will also have artwork on display and available for purchase: large-scale drawings, sketches from my Strange Tales From My Little Black Book series, as well as giclée prints of my drawings.   (I will also have refreshments!)

New for this year is the jitney service so tour-goers don't even need to have a car or to navigate South Orange and Maplewood.  You can catch the Art Shuttle at either the South Orange or Maplewood train stations (accessible from NYC Penn Station via the Midtown Direct Morris/Essex Line) and have access to every stop on the tour (there is a jitney stop at my studio, too!).
There is an extroardinary level of talent in our two towns and this is a wonderful opportunity to see art, to talk directly with the artists about the work that they do and how they do it, and get a glimpse into the often secluded studio spaces of visual artists. 
Hopefully I will see you there!

  

Interview

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Why do I hear Morrissey's voice in my head singing "Bigmouth Strikes Again?"  Oh, it must be my interview with the beinArt International Surreal Art Collective...
Seriously, I am honored to have had an artist interview (click here) with Julie Winters on the bienArt website.  Julie asked thoughtful questions about my drawings, and I do love to answer a good question.  Check out the rest of the site, too:  bienArt features a wide range of artwork by artists that work in the realms of Surrealism, Visonary Art, Symbolism, Lowbrow and other related genres.
For the upcoming weeks: The SOMA Studio Tour (a blog to come sometime next week), I am currently finishing up a portrait drawing with watercolor oriental poppies and gold leaf, and nearly finished with another Strange Tale.  

Pierro Downtown - Small Works South Orange

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This Thursday is an Art Night Out!!!  A reception at Stony's in South Orange (across from the train station) from 7 - 10 PM for Small Works South Orange.  I am exhibiting giclée prints of five of my drawings (the actual drawings will be in my studio during the studio tour).
Info:  

I have to give a big thumbs up to iprintfromhome.com for the giclée prints: they do a beautiful job with printing and the prints are reasonable (plus they have great customer service).  I like to have giclées available on the studio tour (or any other small works venue) because it allows art lovers who cannot necessarily afford the real thing (or do not have space for one of my large drawings) to buy quality reproductions of the images that they really like = spreading art into the world.  The catch is that you really have to start with professional digital files or direct scans to get clear prints of artwork (which is true regardless of who does the printing).

Better art pics & a side project

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I now have decent photos for two of my recent drawings:

The difference between the art photographer's TIFF files and my JPEGS is significant - I compared the two in an earlier blog, and unless I can scan a piece directly onto my scanner, I prefer to go to the pro with the really swell camera (since I am not going to invest in one).
Also, fresh from the art photographer is the first completed cat portrait from a side project that I started last year when my daughter (the cat fanatic) asked me if I would paint portraits of our cats.  I avoided the whole idea for a while because I was visualizing cute cartoon cats and I cannot do cute, until I was looking at paintings by Jean and François Clouet and Hans Holbein the Younger in my art history texts for a portrait assignment I was teaching and a thought flitted through my head: "gee I love those, wouldn't it be fun to paint in that style".  Cat + Fancy Portrait merged and one thing led to another, and I found myself with several highly gessoed and sanded canvases.  After a go at acrylic, then a subsequent 8-month avoidance of painting because of my extreme dislike of acrylic, and then a suggestion to try water soluble oils by another artist who understood my concerns about the risks of toxic painting mediums in a house that also contains children, I finally finished this piece:
The Lady Lucy
(The copyright is tacky, I know, but this is the first piece that I have done that I could visualize on a coffee mug and although I am not above putting the cat portraits on coffee mugs, I don't want someone else stealing my image for that purpose).
Which brings me to the dilemma that I have with my cat portrait side project: what to do with paintings that are completely incongruous with my drawings. 
My solution is a partitian of sorts - I am signing these with an overt nom de plume:  Lucian Parrish (should that be nom de brosse?  I do not speak French).   From his fictitious artist bio:  "Lucian Parrish lives with a bevy of cats in a fancy, old, wrought-iron covered house in Charleston.  Lucian has recently decided to spend his Sunday afternoons in a quaint attic studio painting portraits of his cats (he does not do commissions, by the way - just his own cats).  He states that although it is a slow process and perhaps he will only paint one cat portrait a year, the feeling of moving paint on canvas is a nice way to pass the time."  

On a related side note - to my amusement, this is the first artwork that I have shown around that has garnered a nearly universal response: ohh, are you making prints?!?   The answer is yes: giclées for The Lady Lucy will be available in my studio during the SOMA Studio Tour on June 6th.