My first actual art show was on Broad Street in Red Bank, NJ in 1982:
(And how about that preppy look, huh? Was I on the cutting edge of fashion or what?)It was all about furry animals and sea creatures, and a couple of hamsters playing “stick-up” with Davey Crockett hats. All the pictures were drawn with either watercolor or pastel. And I won an honorable mention. My short life as an artist faded away a few years after that when I became more interested in teenage stuff.
My art has always come and gone throughout my life. I attribute my early artistic endeavors to my encouraging parents who paid for art lessons with a private teacher in her home. Her name was Evelyn Leavens. She’s still a professional artist in Red Bank. You can see her work here. She’s really amazing. She was a single woman who lived in an old tudor style home not far from ours, and she painted on extremely large canvases. Like I remember a few in her dining room that was not used as a dining room. While it had a nice table and chairs in the middle, it mostly housed some of her enormous paintings. As then she had her studio upstairs, that I only saw once because she was pretty apprehensive about letting us kids see her studio. Something else I remember vividly about her is that she loved to feed the squirrels who would come up to her sunroom, where she instructed us. She even had names for the squirrels. A quirky lady. But a great inspiration.
Anyway, I probably didn’t appreciate the exposure to someone like her like I should have. And like I said, art definitely fell by the wayside through high school, emerged again in college and then took another back seat while I pursued my career in New York. Then came marriage, then came the suburbs, then came kids. And mothers out there know the rest of that story.
So after a long journey, I am doing art shows again. No more watercolors and pastels, but with my photography and other mixed media. Fresh off the last art show written about here, I’m doing another one! I’m participating in the CNote Art Show at Junctionview Studios. My piece even made it on the flyer! I circled it…
So this is not like a gallery opening or anything, and I won’t be getting an honorable mention or definitely not a blue ribbon. I’m hoping to make somewhere around a CNote! Because everything at this art show is for sale and is $100. Easy to remember, right? Just bring a cool CNote or two with you to the show and you’ll make all of us artists very happy. It happens the weekend of Sept 25th - 27th. Hey, Christmas is right around the corner, right?
