final impressions blog - February 2007

February 25 , 2007 - South Bristol Cultural Center

This weekend we dropped off some prints at the South Bristol Cultural Center in Canandaigua. Before we arrived at the center, we drove along Canandaigua lake. The lake was reflecting the last light of day in a dazzling patchwork of steel blue and yellow. The sky was a was very unusual pink and green and blue.

We met with Jo Anne and talked about art festivals for an hour. Her husband Albert is an oil painter so they do a lot of festivals each year. It was fun trading stories. She also sent us a link to the Grape Festival in Naples NY, so we are thinking about adding that show to our list for 07.

Here is one of the prints that will be in the gallery. It's a fun offbeat piece I did while crawling around some abandoned buildings.

February 21 , 2007 - Artisans' Loft

We have recently been working with Artisans' Loft in The Landing at Pultneyville NY to create a special image presentation for their gallery. Our work will be in their wonderful fine art and gift gallery. They will be highlighting my work of Pultneyville (B. Forman park), Sodus Point (future) and Chimney Bluffs area.

The new style has a distinctive black border around the image, more paper margin that now includes the image location (in this case “B. Forman Park, Pultneyville, NY”). We also use a double cream mat and a special black wood frame.

February 18 , 2007 - Digital Artwork Centre

Over the last few years I have assembled a set of tools that help me run the art side of the business. These include standard editors, my own set of unique toning applications and an array of software tools that I wrote to help set up images for the website, catalog and other promotional material.

The most annoying thing about using these various tools is a constant search for the files, drag and drop etc. Since February is the month of tool development, I decided to create an integrated console windows application. The screen shot shows the "Digital Artwork Centre" console. From the one application, I can search for artwork, printing, or viewing files. Select and launch them and even run my toning batch files (C,W,N buttons) and the simulated framing batch files.

This will save me a lot of time, which will allow me to concentrate on the joy of creating artwork and not the discomfort of looking for all the pieces to run the business.

February 15 , 2007 - Low tech to High Tech

As part of my chores each month I try to get the website updated with my latest portfolio work. Step one is to update the “art by location” index. This starts as an output from my database as a spreadsheet, and then I run it through a compiler that I wrote to generate webpages for each image as well as the index page. Most of you have glazed over by now. Anyhow, this used to take a lot of time because I could never remember how to setup the compiler to run - you would think I could remember. After spending several hours getting it all running and the pages posted, I saw one link that is dead. Image number m09928. This means I didn’t have the image in the directory when I ran the compiler. Rats!

So to avoid this problem in the future, I put a windows UI on my .Net console app. Now I’ll catch these problems early.

The geek in me is now satisfied. Next up is the dreaded wall gallery.

February 10 , 2007 - A life of Monochrome

While researching for a presentation on my journey through the world of monochrome for Camera Rochester "The Magic of Monochrome", I began looking through my collection of early pencil and charcoal drawings. I found some gems hidden is an old folder of my early years.

Created in my 20's, this piece created about 30 years ago shows a interest in monochrome work. I could have chosen color pastels, oils, or any other form of color medium, but I chose pencil, one of my favorites.

As this photo shows, there is some damage to the artwork, but it does survive nicely to this day.