"First Friday" is an old-fashioned Catholic devotional practice, but it is also the monthly arts festival held by Falls Church Arts and other places and people around the downtown area. One of the centerpieces of the Arts First Friday is the opening of each month's show at Art and Frame of Falls Church. June, then, is my month, and June 1 conveniently fell on a Friday, thus giving me the entire month of thirty days to display my work. My birthday is also in June, so I get a gallery art show for my birthday.

I have been working on this show, as faithful readers of this Electron know, for almost a year. I negotiated the June month with the gallery owner back last September. Since then I have been producing my architectural portraits in preparation for the show. The last in the series, the one with Bedo's Leatherworks, (see the May 30 entry) was only finished a few days before the show opened. I came to the gallery some hours before the show opened on Friday, to arrange the art on the wall and put the identification and price tags up. At the last moment, we decided to put two of my de-commissioned Trader Joe's dairy signs in the show, though they are not for sale due to copyright reasons. This is what the whole show looked like, with a separate row for my geometric abstractions.

I was very touched to find a splendid bouquet of flowers already there at the gallery for me. They had been sent by my wonderful Kansas friends, one of whom you met when we went to New England together.

We placed the flowers in their vase on colorful cloths which were set up for the refreshments. People started coming in even before the official opening time of 6 PM. The catering was done by the "Two Sisters" whose coffee stand I depicted in one of my paintings. They brought not only coffee but sandwiches and pastries. Other people brought more food, as if it were a potluck supper. The gallery provided wine (from Trader Joe's, of course).

In a half hour the gallery was filled with people. I was delighted that two of my ambient musician friends from the Stillstream.com community came to the show. It was the first time I had ever met anyone from this group face to face. My loyal friends from my own circles came as well, including one who made a two-hour drive from her home in south central Pennsylvania. Some of my co-workers from Trader Joe's also came to the show. The rest of the crowd were local folk who love art and come to the festive events every month, as well as other artists and members of Falls Church Arts. I got to meet some of these people, many of whom have lived in the area for many decades. They told me fascinating stories about the buildings I had portrayed for the show. Each one of them has a history, and for some of these sites, that history soon will only exist on paper or in memory.

Here's a picture of the group in the gallery space.

Some of the people you see there are my dear friends who not only socialize with me but also buy my art. They're not only friends, they're "Patrons." I was also happy to see young folk there (such as the girl in the turquoise shirt looking intently at my art wall). Around 7:30 or so I gave a short talk about the art on the wall, with my wine glass in my hand. I never have a problem talking about anything in public, but it was quite noisy and I had to raise my voice to be heard over the active crowd. But I got my message through. Sometime during the show evening, a Falls Church worthy bought my Bedo's picture. That's a fast turnaround—from studio to sold in four days. I hope more will sell throughout the month.

By eight PM, the party was declared over and we all dispersed into the balmy night to further social engagements. I went with a bunch of my friends to a nearby Japanese restaurant. I was greatly relieved to get the gallery show up with everything going smoothly and no opening night disasters. I am still enjoying the sense of freedom now that the deadline is over. But there is plenty more that I have planned that was put aside because of the preparations for the show, and now I must go to it. You will hear those plans as I accomplish them. Today, Saturday, I was back in a Starbucks doing a coffee sign, and on Sunday it's back to work among the artisan bread and organic romaine lettuce at Trader Joe's. And there's also my trigonometry review, which emerges from the architectural perspectives and my trusty T square and triangle. Electron readers who attended the show, thanks for being there!

Posted at 3:27 am | link