Peters Valley Gallery Opening Night

The Water Gap Woodturners came out in full force to support the show at the Sally D. Francisco Gallery at Peters Valley. We would like to extend our thanks to Peters Valley for inviting us to exhibit our work showcasing our members talents, and the tireless effort of Brienne to put it all together!

The space was in utter chaos on april 7th when we met at the store before the April meeting. Brienne assured us that she would make us look good and that somehow it would all come together. She had called me a couple of times during the week to ask for help in getting some pieces displayed, since there were some unlevel floor issues and tiny bases on some of my vessels. I was completely blown away when I walked upstairs, as were the other members of the club. We never looked so good!

Pictured right are (L to R):

Bruce

Richard

Wil

Dan

Brienne

In addition to making us all look good, Brienne also managed to feed us! We were artists for a day, as we sipped wine and cheese. Ok, you caught me... at least half of us went across the street in our fancy clothes to look at the two walnut trees that the park service had just cut down, and Wil and I took a ride to look at some tiger maple covered in burls. Stay tuned for more on that topic.

In our exhibit, we got to see some immediate results from recent meetings. Richard took our ball turning demo to a whole new level. Pictured on the left is a kicked-up version of the Mexican ball and cup game. It is a ball and peg game, and the idea is to get the ball to land on the peg in that little hole. I can attest that it is about as hard as it looks, although I did witness Richard do it at least once.

Brian's hookwork and Bruce's throw tops also grace the case, which is behind glass to protect the other work in the gallery :-) It's not hard to imagine people playing with them, as they are a FUNctional piece of art... (I write the blog, so deal with the bad puns...)

Picture (L to R):

Bruce (again, that guy is everywhere!)

Tony

Wil (travels with Bruce, I guess?)

Steve

Dan (travels with Wil, of course...)

I would also like to thank Jane for being smarter than me and remembering to bring a camera, or this would be a pretty boring entry. I "negotiated" exclusive rights to these pictures for the blog, but I thought it made sense to give a photo credit, since we'd be looking at fuzzy cell phone shots if it were up to me to remember things. A big thanks to Jane from the WGW membership.

If you have a few minutes to spare next weekend, please stop by the gallery during the Peters Valley Open Studio weekend. I think its a valuable exercise to be in the crowd incognito to hear what real people think of our work as woodturners. We are often too close to the work, and surrounded by other woodturners to get the every man perspective. If you want to stop by the wood studio, there will be a few WGW folks manning the lathes to demonstrate turning to the visitors.

See you in May.