My very own art show!

The library in the little community where I taught has a hallway gallery when you enter.  Artists are invited to sign up to exhibit for one month.  For many years, I hung my elementary students' artwork in this gallery for the month of March, to celebrate Youth Art Month, and the teacher who replaced me  has continued this tradition.  The high school art teacher also takes a turn of a month for her student work!  During my final year of teaching, and her first year, she and I did a joint exhibit of our personal work in this gallery; I blogged about that show in a post you can find HERE.   Fast-forward a few years to now, and I'm back exhibiting in the library, this time with just my own artwork, including the paintings above and below.

This past summer, I attended an immersive plein air painting class on the campus of Bennington College, and wrote about it in a blog post HERE.  I recently refined the two paintings directly above that were painted during this time (on the Bennington College library patio, and a statue found in a garden on the grounds of historic Park McCullough House).  I wanted the opportunity to share these paintings, as well as the other work from the summer, and also some acrylic textural paintings I had recently completed.  So I jumped at the chance to show this work for the first time, at this gallery, where my work will be seen by many of my former students!  Here's a few views of most of the gallery, each wall from both directions. First, here's the wall with the oil paintings (and some photos and doodles not visible in these pics).

And here's the other, shorter wall...

I should note that due to the size of the hallway and lighting, I struggled to get decent photos.  I didn't want to use a flash and get glare on the artwork, either.  So these imperfect photos will have to suffice.  Anyhow, here are some close-ups of the work on exhibit. Directly below, four of the oil paintings completed during my Bennington week - trees at dusk outside the painting studio, a brick wall at the faculty village, an interior of the greenhouse at the Park McCullough Historic House, and a campus view. (There's another campus view at the top of this post.) 

Also on display are two recent acrylic textural abstractions.  Directly below is a piece titled 'Elements', and below it is the larger 'Marsh Dreams', which incorporates a lot of fabric collage and beads, as well as the use of various textural acrylic mediums. 

And there's a selection of 8 of my photos.  Choosing just 8 was an insane challenge, but I only had 8 frames and I wasn't ready to buy more or cut more mats...

I am also displaying my doodles, many of which you saw in my prior post.

There's a small oil painting that I did looking out at the lake from our 'camp', where we spend much of our summer and fall.  I keep changing this painting - unfortunately the light was different each time I worked on it plein air, so I gave up and just had fun with it at home in the studio.  Not terrific, but better than it was!

 And a stand of bright flowers painted on the Bennington campus

 And that's the entire show, pretty much!  Thanks for stopping in for a look!

Snow and more snow; and views from an art show

Snow sleet blowing winds more snow more snow icy winds zero visibility more snow more snow... I don't know how much is out there yet - hard to tell with all the blowing but certainly it will be well over a foot by the time its done and that might be a moderate estimate. Though it's blowing so much I don't know how they'll measure it.

I keep looking out the window half expecting Omar Sharif (as Dr. Zhivago) to come staggering out of the blizzard, frozen, with snow and ice crusted in his hair and mustache (but still looking handsome despite it all), calling out for Lara... Lara... (if you are too young to have ever seen the movie Dr. Zhivago, put it on your Netflix queue now!)

The sky is gray white and even though it is after 9AM the paperboy hasn't even gotten here yet. School is closed, though we had already used up our 3 snow days. I don't want to guess how they'll get us to make it up. I hope I remembered to water the plants in my art room on Friday.

I can't even go out and shovel yet. It has to show some sign of calming down or it will be futile. So I'm going to make the best of the day. After blogging, I'll get out the beads and jewelry tools. Or maybe the sewing machine. Or bake some lowfat healthy cookies. Or maybe all three!

* UPDATE: almost noon now, and just in from first shoveling. I'd say there's at LEAST 18" so far...though it seems to be slowing now, finally, and the sky is brightening.

In the meantime, here are some views from a mini art show I set up at our little local public library last week but forgot to post. The kids' work will stay there for a month. You've already seen most of this artwork if you've been reading my blog.

No rest homes for elderly library books

Another year done. Our school has a fabulous ritual: as the buses pull away for their final trip of the year, everyone heads outside to wave, the kids wave out the bus windows, and the drivers honk like crazy (kind of like the sound of the vuvuzelas at World Cup Soccer we've heard so much about!).

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about books. After the waving and honking, I made a shortcut back to my classroom by cutting through the school library. I noted piles of books on top of the stacks, and, of course, I wondered if any were possible candidates for my "altered books" project. Some looked old, but others not so much. I noted in particular a gorgeous copy of The Ocean World by Jacques Cousteau that I wanted to keep myself.

Turns out, these books were all being DISCARDED. Some were published before a certain date and therefore possibly contained lead. I understand that these need to be trashed. Other books contained outdated or obsolete information. But many were just books that had been republished with an updated look or format, or books that had too many duplicates in the library, or books that were rarely signed out and therefore were being removed for space reasons. There was nothing WRONG with these books.

So I asked - if these are being removed from the library, can't they be either :
*given away to students who have little resources,
*donated to a rummage sale or used book sale, or
*sent to a part of the world that can use any books (Haiti, parts of Africa, Afghanistan, etc)
But I was told no. The auditor was watching them and these books had to be DESTROYED. NO CHOICE. (New York State Laws and Regulations and all that jazz.) As an avid reader, it broke my heart.

My question to you: what happens to old books in your school/library/state? Do they get handed down to folks in need? Or trashed as miserably as these? Why is there no sweet place to send old books out to pasture? I'm so sad...
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An aside: A really sweet quirky old book about a very unusual library : The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. And a much newer but also sweet, charming book I just finished last week: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. What's on your summer reading list?