A Show at the Mercy Gallery and an Artist's Residency at The Loomis Chaffee School

On Sunday, February 23, I headed to south with a car full of paintings, to hang a show, open the show and do an artist's residency at The Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, CT.. The gallery director and chairman of the art department, Jennifer McCandless had seen my show at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts last year and invited me to show at the Mercy Gallery on the Loomis Chaffee campus. On Monday we hung the show. I was assisted by Al and Ron, two maintenance staff members and both avid woodworkers. Here's what I learned. Woodworkers make excellent show hangers and laser levels can come in very handy in such situations. In the afternoon I did a watercolor workshop for painting instructor Chet Kempczyski's class. The facilities at Loomis Chaffee are outstanding. I was housed in a beautiful studio suite on the upper levels of the Richmond Art Center.

This was the studio part of my apartment. I managed to do several watercolors here during my stay.

 My idea for this show was to show a number of different aspects of my work and tie them all in with two walls that were papered with sketchbook reprints. I think it was important to show my sketchbook work, as that is the basis of all my work. In the show were humorous paintings, grid paintings, word paintings, recent abstract work and an entire wall of watercolors.

On Tuesday I presented a powerpoint presentation of my work to an auditorium full of kids and spoke about how important sketchbooks have been to my life and gave an overview of my career.

The Ellen Magurn (my lovely wife) Method: One of the many life lessons that was shown to the students of Loomis Chaffee in the course of my presentation.

 Tuesday night was the opening and there was a good turnout. It coincided with a show of student work from the previous semester. I had the opportunity to speak with a number of kids and parents. One of the highlights of the evening was the appearance of Randy Enos and his wife, Leann, whom I had not seen in a number of years. After the show, we headed up to my apartment and shared stories for a couple of hours. It was so cool to see them both.

I'm not normally a fan of odd typefaces, but this one, whatever it is, seemed to sum up the flavor of the show. Good call, Jen.

The south wall.  Reprints of sketchbook pages on the left, with a grouping of 15 humorous acrylics. Photo by Mike Taylor.

The west wall: 3 word paintings, a grouping of sketchbook reprints of word drawings and 3 abstracts. Photo by Mike Taylor.

The north wall: a grouping of 18 small watercolors. Photo by Mike Taylor

The east wall: a grouping of 11 grid paintings. Photo by Mike Taylor

I headed back to Vermont early on Wednesday morning, as they were predicting snow. It never materialized. I was a great adventure and I would like to thank Jennifer for hosting my stay. Our standard poodle, Maude was very happy to see me. She is my beloved studiomate and didn't at all dig being alone for a couple of days. I gave her a couple of biscuits and then it was back to the studio, me to work and Maude to snooze.

Maudie