Artiste

This weekend's big event was my brother's art exhibition reception. This is his Master's thesis, and he's been working on it like a dog all summer. Not making the art -- I think the newest piece in the show was done last last year -- but finding a venue (he wound up using the hallways of the middle school where he'll be teaching this year), making invitations and researching print costs, building the catalog, and getting all his pieces framed. (I thought having everything framed was vaguely ridiculous -- oil paintings can be shown unframed, and some of the texture pieces might have been easier to examine without cases -- but it's apparently a requirement. I guess the school wants to make sure their students start off on the appropriate "starving artist" level -- John wound up having to get cases custom made from a shop in Chicago for the 3-D pieces, and he and my dad hand-built most of the other frames. Which is no mean trick, as there were over 20 pieces in the show, several of them taller than me.)


And Sam has been working nearly as hard; not knowing how many people to expect at the reception yesterday, she assumed the standard rule that about 1/3 of the people you invite to a party will show up, and so she's been planning, buying, and making food for somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 people.


John had asked me to be the "official" photographer for the event, which I was happy to do, not being able to help out much otherwise. I mostly avoided taking pictures of the art itself, since John's got it all posted on his Facebook page, but now I kind of wish I'd taken more, because it was really cool stuff.

Matt and I are buying a couple of pieces, in fact. We desperately want one more, but since it's six feet tall and twelve feet long, there's no way we could fit it into our house in any reasonable way. And at that size, none of the printers John has talked to have any way to produce smaller prints. John and I talked about my possibly getting some really quality photos of it, after the show is done, to make poster-sized prints of it. We'll see what we can manage.

All in all, John's done some wonderful things, and I hope he's as proud of himself as I am.

The reception was by invitation only, but the show's open to the public through Thursday this week -- if you're in the area and at all interested, let me know and I'll send you the location information.