|
|
|
late pandemic art opening
Sunday, March 13 2022
This morning I got up a little before 9:00am (it would've been a little before 8:00am, but overnight we'd switched over to Daylight Savings Time). Eventually Gretchen got up and we played Spelling Bee in the living room. Temperatures outside were in the 30s, but it was so sunny that I didn't bother starting a fire in the woodstove.
After doing yet more workplace work (which I wouldn't at this point refer to as "procrastinated," though perhaps it was, Gretchen, Powerful, and I rode together in the Chevy Bolt down to a place called west of New Paltz called Unison Arts & Learning Center to attend an art opening by Sean, an artist we've known for years (he's married to Hope and they live together in a house across the street from Rosendale's ugliest church). This was, I'm pretty sure, the first art opening we'd attended since the pandemic's start.
Sean's work consisted of dozens of tiny drawings he'd made over the two years (so far) of the coronavirus pandemic. There were about 35 people attending the show and everyone except the one child and a curly-haired terrier wore masks. It being an art opening, there were snacks and wine, and to consume these, people temporarily lowered their masks. As for Sean's art, it mostly consisted of tiny quickly-executed black on white drawings, though there were also several involving splashes of color (sometimes to represent Donald Trump's absurd poof of hair). At least one of the works appeared to have been designed using a computer and was full-color. Amusingly, Sean's abstract style often showed faces as clouds of features with no lines indicating their limits. There were over 20 drawings hung in the gallery, though he'd drawn more than 40. Gretchen bought a small book (for $75) containing reproductions of that larger number of drawings.
In the middle of the gallery were a couple large tables where, Sean said has part of his address to the assembled, we were encouraged to make our own art in response to the pandemic, Sean's art, or perhaps both (or topics, such as the January 6th insurrection or the killing of George Floyd that had happened in the past two years). Unfortunately, the only paper provided was lined paper. But I eventually sat down and drew a rooster whose head had been replaced with the multi-tentacled ball of a giant coronavirus.
After leaving the gallery, Gretchen, Powerful and I decided to get a late lupper at P&G's, the big gritty sportsbar loved by New Paltz students and aging alcholics alike. We were the only ones wearing masks when we entered, though we took them off after being seated at a booth in the back. I ordered the Kaaterskill Krush IPA along with my Impossible Burger with fries, and it was a hazy IPA that was decidedly better than a Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing.
We weren't sitting at our table long before another couple arrived and sat down in an adjacent booth. The man immediately put me on edge with an unpleasant cough into his elbow, and when he just kept coughing (not always into anything), we all decided to get up and move to a more isolated table in the way back, a place where I could watch the starlings battle over large chunks of bread they'd found in the alley.
The furball that took about a year to form from Oscar's fur on the left. It weighs about 90 grams. On the right is a hairball I started the day before yesterday. It weighs almost exactly 3 grams.
Gretchen and Powerful in front of Sean's art at Unison
Sean (in the black beanie) talks to the people who came to his opening. Also visible to his right is his wife Hope. And our old former-friend Michæl (in the green mask and grey trousers) is also visible. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?220313 feedback
previous | next |
