My first art show

Yesterday I celebrated the opening of my first art show. It was a life experience.

That is how I keep describing it. It is true! The show is on till the end of the month. That is right, the show must go on! Meanwhile we opened it last night with style.

People are so nice. I keep thinking that. Friends I had no idea would show up showed up. My friend Gary held a party for me after it. Strangers came in off the street.

These were all pictures I had drawn in the last year. It started in Inktober when I discovered how much I loved going out and drawing from life in pen and ink. Now the walls of Ashker's, this beautiful coffee shop on Elmwood Avenue, were covered with my drawings.

The show itself made me realize how much work goes on behind the scenes in the art world the same as in every other world. At The Buffalo News we would joke about how actual writing was only about 10 percent of our job, if that. The rest was ... oh, returning phone calls, making phone calls, getting sources to talk to you, schmoozing people so they would tell you what you needed to know, keeping your calendar in order, fact-checking yourself, thinking up new ideas, going to meetings, it never ended.

So it is in art too. I do not even want to talk about the work that led up to this. But it had to be, you know? I read that Leonard Bernstein said that the secret to success was "a great idea, and not quite enough time to do it."

Nothing gets done without a deadline!

Look at Mozart. They had to lock him up to get him to finish "The Magic Flute." If they had not locked him into a hut someone else would have had to finish it.

Anyway. I had my deadline and I worked. To steady my nerves I listened to "Die Meistersinger," this production I found on YouTube with Berndt Weikl and Siegfried Jerusalem.  Then on Friday I went in to Ashker's and the curator, Julia, and I put the show together.

All day we worked, getting pictures up on the walls, and there are a lot of pictures, because I do a lot of drawing. Finally in the late afternoon I left and scooted downtown to get to Mass for All Saints' Day. Of course it was a holy day!

The actual day itself was more stressful than my wedding day. I was in a complete daze. At church today I had trouble praying because I kept thinking about stupid things I had said, duh. But people were great and I got through it. Everything worked out great and I feel exhilarated now that the opening is over and went so well.

The, ahem, art will be on the walls until the end of November. You will have to go and see it if you are curious because I have discovered that the picture mechanism on this Web log is not working for now. No pictures, for now.

But they are at Ashker's, 1002 Elmwood Ave.

On the wall!