Juried Member Show - Awards and Reception (Part One)

(photo courtesy of John Cusick)

Friday night was certainly a great occasion for all those who made it to our third annual Juried Member Show awards ceremony and reception. In fact the event was so awesome that one mere blog post just can't do it justice, and so I think I will have to break it up into multiples - maybe three will do it. You'll just have to hold your breath to see the artwork. The artwork will come up in following posts.

Those who were with us last year, and who have attended our meetings, know what a nice gallery space it is at Ponte Vedra, not to mention that they hang the show for us. As anyone who has ever done it knows, hanging the show is just about the hardest part of the whole process, so having it done for us is a big plus!

As in previous years our members really "stepped up to the plate" in providing us with outstanding food for the reception.

There was plenty for all of the large crowd who attended, and a wonderful variety as well.

And some of our members demonstrated that their artistry extends far beyond pastels!

(photo courtesy of John Cusick) 

We had a great turnout of artists, friends, family members.

I heard nothing but praise about the artwork, and about the food as well, :-)

(photo courtesy of John Cusick)

This year there were a few seats available to rest a bit, but I think next time we might try to have even a few more!

There were some there who were also impressed by the beautiful ribbons we had to award, and couldn't wait to see who the winners were - but in addition to the lovely ribbons we had generous prizes of both cash and merchandise. I don't think any of our winners were unhappy with the prizes received.

We have to wait until the next post to actually see the paintings from the show, but here are all the winners.

Congratulations to our winners:

Best of Show:

 ‘Hijinx at the Helm’, by Corinne Samuels

First Place:

 ‘East Point’ by Wendy Devarieux

(Wendy was unable to be with us Friday evening)

Second Place:

 ‘Last Day of Summer’ by Patrick Mahoney

Third Place:

 ‘Just After Dawn’ by Lyn Asselta

Merit Awards:

‘Nightfall Hunting Island’ by Eve Miller

(Eve was unable to be with us Friday evening)

‘South Creek’ by Steve Johnson

(Steve was unable to be with us Friday evening)

‘One Pair, Both Red’ by Rick Petersen

‘Ximenez-Fatio House’, by Cindy Pierson

People’s Choice Awards:

            ‘Handyman’ by Cindy Pierson

            ‘Kelsey’ by Corinne Samuels

And our founder and current co-President was surprised by the new award the members created in her honor, the Founders Award.

Lyn Asselta Founders Award:

            ‘New Day, New Year’ by Sherri Lewis-Seals

Stay tuned for the next post and you will get to see the wonderful award-winning artwork.

May is coming - bring your pastels!

What: May general meeting
When: Saturday, May 2, 10 AM to noon
Where: Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach

Yes everyone, the posts about our WONDERFUL member juried show will be available shortly, but in the meantime it's almost MAY, and that means our next upcoming member general meeting is almost here as well. This is going to be a "hands on" meeting for everyone so you need to bring your pastels with you.

Please bring a backing board, a simple reference photo, a sheet of your favorite paper, approx. 8 x 10, and 3-4 values of two different complementary colors, preferably hard pastels, but not your softest pastels. (for example: 3 sticks of violet-light, medium and dark and 3 sticks of yellow, light, medium and dark.) Please bring something other than Terry Ludwig pastels.

Why the Terry Ludwig restriction? Lyn has this to say:

I've had a couple people ask why they shouldn't bring Terry Ludwigs....
I personally LOVE Terry Ludwigs, but for this particular exercise, I don't want you filling up the tooth of your paper too quickly.   Hence the request for harder pastels of any kind (NuPastel, Faber Castell, Caran d'Ache, Rembrandt, possibly even some Unison or Mt. Vision)

It should be a lot of fun. Hope to see many of you there this Saturday.

Spring Park - another awesome day

When you plan for a plein air event months in advance you never know what you will have on the day.  Spring Park, though, seemed to be able to cover any eventuality - lovely vistas of course, but plenty of shade for hotter days, lots of covered shelter in case of rain.

But once again we were lucky. It was in the upper 60s and breezy when we arrived, just about perfect. It did warm to the upper 70s as the morning wore on, but the shade and the breeze kept everyone comfortable. The threatened early afternoon thunderstorms never materialized.

Once again we had around a dozen folks who came up to paint with us. Several immediately set up prime spots inside the gazebo near the water's edge.

There were plenty of squirrels checking us out. They must get fed by park visitors as they were certainly bold and unafraid of humans.

Spring Park is big enough to offer plenty of options, but small enough that we could mostly see everyone and see what viewpoints they had chosen.

The views of the St. Johns River were of primary interest to most FCPS members however.

And most folks found spots to set up that allowed shade and comfort, but great views of the river.

Though others wandered along the stream up towards the iconic spring in Spring Park to find their inspiration.

There was certainly something for everyone, and easy walking if you were carrying all your plein air "stuff" while you checked it out.

This pair of sailboats riding at anchor seemed to capture the imagination of more than one FCPS'er.

As usual we broke for lunch about noon and had lunch and a show-and-tell under one of the cool and comfortable covered picnic pavilions. Below are works that were done, in various stages of completion of course, and some members even found time to do more than one painting.

More and more I'm seeing members working small on plein air days, which lends itself to multiple paintings if you choose. Quite a few of these were in the 5x7 or smaller size.

There was *one* issue that was completely unexpected. Since we were there for a full morning one of the key pluses was that the park featured not only ONE but TWO restrooms. And yet we got there only to find BOTH restrooms were locked, and remained so the entire morning. I live locally and go to Spring Park quite often, and I have never ever found the rest rooms locked whenever I went there. Talk about surprises ....

At any rate we have a member meeting coming up in May. Details will be posted on the blog later this month, but there are already details listed in the calendar which you can find by scrolling to the end of the blog. Check it out now if you like. It sounds like an interesting exercise in store for all.

Spring Park plein air

What: FCPS plein air
Where: Spring Park, Green Cove Springs
When: April 4, 2015, 9 AM to 1 PM

Back in the fall of 2011 the First Coast Pastel Society was just a gleam in Lyn Asselta's eye. In fact we didn't even have that name in mind yet at the time, but Lyn held a meeting at her home and tried to invite as many folks as she could reach out to to see if there was enough interest to form a pastel society for this area. There was a lot of enthusiasm so she decided to go ahead. That very next month, in November of 2011, we decided to have a plein air paint-out.

The venue chosen was Spring Park in Green Cove Springs, and we had about a dozen enthusiastic pastelists show up and paint. It was a wonderful day, and such a lovely place to paint that it seemed high time to go back there again now that we are formally a society with many more members.

Spring Park lies on the banks of the St. Johns River, on the east side of US 17 as it goes through the heart of Green Cove Springs. If you click on the link above you will see it lies between Walnut St. and Spring St.

The park has wonderful  water views, with a fishing pier that goes far out over the river. Sometimes interesting boats are docked at the far end of the pier. There are covered picnic areas and a large gazebo (which we took advantage of our first time there when it began to drizzle). There is a small brook leading from the iconic spring down to the river. There are lots of trees.

In short, there are all sorts of wonderful potential subjects for plein air. Not to mention two rest rooms!

Lots of birds too if you want to capture some wildlife in your paintings.  Below is the painting done that day by our own Richard Lundgren - as fantastic an artist then as he is now. :-)

The park is in the heard of downtown Green Cove, so there are also interesting historic buildings nearby that could be your subjects as well.

And if you need a pick-me-up or would rather have pizza (or other Italian food) for lunch rather than a picnic - well Spring Park Coffee and D'Fontana's Italian Restaurant are both on Ferris St., an easy walk.

NOTE: There is some destruction/construction going on at the park on the Walnut Street side, but the park is still open. However better to park in the lot by the playground on the Spring St. side, or at the end of Spring St. down by the picnic area along the river.