Category: News

For the entire month of December, you can provide a FREE $5 donation to the BVAA by purchasing the “fresh Cookbook” at Hannaford supermarkets.

The freshCookbook was released in July 2018 and contains the best fresh Magazine recipes that Hannaford customers have enjoyed for years – plus it is a perfect holiday gift!

At checkout, you’ll then be given a “Giving Coupon”. You indicate that it should go to support the BVAA.

We get a $5 donation!

This is valid through December 31, 2018. So be sure to keep your eyes out for that cookbook when you’re at Hannaford’s!

https://www.hannaford.com/

Minutes from Officers Meeting
Tuesday November 6, 2018 (election day)
Began 6:30pm at Uxbridge gallery

Present –
Lisa Shea, Bob Evans, Carol Frieswick, Dennis Smith, Pam Siderewicz

1) Review Milford TV Station Schedule
Schedule is set. Milford TV has it posted. Individual events are set up on BVAA.org site and on Facebook page. Milford has been lobbying for the separate receptions and will be paying for food and wine for them. The schedule of all “last Thursdays of the Month” (except for December) should build up attendance momentum.

Dennis suggested setting up master time-based listing of upcoming events on BVAA.org page.

Small Works – Nov-Dec 2018
Drop-off Thu Oct 25
Reception Thu Nov 29

Winter Magic – Jan-Feb 2019
drop-off Thu Jan 3
Reception Thu Jan 31

Spring Joy – Mar-Apr 2019
Drop-off Thu Feb 28
Reception Thu Mar 28

Monochrome – May-Jun 2019
Drop-Off Thu Apr 25
Reception Thu May 30

Summertime – Jul-Aug 2019
Drop-Off Thu Jun 27
Reception Thu July 25

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2) Review BVAA meeting presenter schedule
Carol F did an awesome job of arranging this back in August or so. This seems to be set and fine.

Sept. JoAnn Naugher — Alcohol Inks (had to cancel, had Carol Arnold instead)

Oct. Adria Arch — Golden Acrylic products demo and free samples (people loved this)

Nov. Carolyn Letvin — Monoprints via palm printing method

Dec. party

Jan. Panel of Photographers who have done work in a series—Bob E.-James and Mike etc.

Feb. group critique

March. Gamblin product demo and free samples

April. JoAnn Naugher — Alcohol Inks

May. election and party

Note that the Golden demo person is willing to do a 4-hour workshop for $600. We’d have to get at least 10 people to want to do it before the per-person price became even remotely reasonable.

Also look into Grafton pastel workshop.

I’ll let people know about the Cuttyhunk / Avalon opportunities in late spring.

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3) Work on Uxbridge Gallery Show Schedule
This was the meat of the meeting and took most of the hour.

FALL SHOW
October 12 to November 17 2018
Pickup – listed as Sat Nov 17. Changing to Sat Nov 10th as we want Tapestry to be live Nov 17th.

TAPESTRY SHOW
November 17 to December 1
Drop-off Sat Nov 3 and Sat Nov 10
Hanging Wed Nov 14th. Pam created a cool wreath to post next to wall sign.
Reception – Sat Dec 1 4-7pm / Uxbridge First Night
Pickup – Mon Dec 3

SMALL WORKS HOLIDAY SHOW
December 8 through December 31
Drop-off Sat Dec 1
Hanging Wed Dec 5
Reception – BVAA Party Tue Dec 18th
Pickup – Sat Jan 5 and Sat Jan 12th

ANYTHING GOES PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW – *2 pieces* (had far too many in 2018)
January 19 – February 23
Drop-Off Sat Jan 5 and Sat Jan 12
Hanging Wed Jan 16
Reception – Fri Jan 18th
Pickup – Feb 23

TEEN EXPRESSIONS SHOW MARCH – want to get flyers done soon so we can publicize this
March 2 – Mar 30
Drop-Off – Sat Feb 23
Hang – Wed Feb 27
Reception – Fri Mar 1
Pickup – Mar 30

PAMELA WHITE STUDENT SHOW
April 6 – May 11
Reception – WE ARE NOT INVOLVED – Sam handles this.
Pickup – May 11

BVAA Spring Show
* could be held off-site if interesting location is found *
The Uxbridge gallery is a good back-up plan in case we don’t.
May 18 – June 8
Reception –
Pickup – June 8

??? OPEN FOR ADVENTURES
June 15 – …..

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Non-Uxbridge-Gallery opportunities

* Milford TV – set for year

* Grafton Inn – Bob did an awesome job of setting this up for us. We get good sales here. I’m checking on open spots, John R keeps selling his owls :).

* Worcester Senior Center – reception Tue 12/18 11am-1pm. Asking Suki about Jan-Feb. (We will get Mar-Apr)

* Art-Poetry show – set – finding 3 more poets and then will do pairing. Blackstone Library in March and Millbury B&N in April.

* Sutton post office – running smoothly with rotations, 7 Sutton residents in BVAA.

* Whitinsville post office – planning, 6 Whitinsville residents in BVAA. Will ask Christine.

* Muffin House – Carol will let them know we’ll take it. 2 month rotations, 4 people, 18 pieces.

* Southgate senior center in Shrewsbury – Carol will get next available date. Floral theme. 18 pieces, 1/2 each. They professionally hang them for us. I’ll look for Carol’s photos of her show to show samples.

* Northbridge senior center – they are installing a hanging system. Carol will check when they’re done to see how we can hang there.

* Sunflower show / Webster is always popular in the late summer. We get regular sales there.

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Encourage (again) classes and workshops in gallery space
* Carol Arnold gets 1-3 a month
* Northbridge is available for weekday daytime classes

Finances are solid, with over $11,000 in our bank account. Carol F is a financial wizard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meeting ended at 7:30pm.

Extra note:

I forgot about Choco l’Art. This is our annual show at the Whitinsville Library around Valentine’s Day.

Reception is Sat Feb 9, 2019
Take down end-of-day Sat Feb 16, 2019

During the month of October, every Community bag sold at the Hannaford store located at:

158 No. Main Street
Uxbridge MA

will generate a $1 donation to support the Blackstone Valley Art Association!

Hannaford Community bags can be found on the dedicated reusable bag rack.

Please support the BVAA and share the news!

Up until September 2018, the Blackstone Valley Art Association Alternatives Uxbridge Gallery had no hanging system. That meant that every time a show was hung, actual metal nails were hammered into the walls. This was, as you might imagine, awful for the historic brick walls. We were chipping away at the mortar. It was also less than ideal for the regular walls, as they were getting peppered with holes and marks.

On Friday, August 31st and Saturday, September 1st, 2018, a team of BVAA members came together to do an incredible painting project. The opening reception for our Show of Hands show was only a week away – on Friday, September 7th. That meant we had to get the existing walls cleaned, spackled, painted with two coats of paint, and dried. Next, the hanging system had to be brought in and be installed. And then we had to hang the show.

It was a race against time.

With enthusiastic cooperation and great team spirit, it was all done! Now the compliments pour in on how wonderful the gallery looks.

For those who are curious, the Uxbridge gallery was painted London Fog grey. We used an eggshell finish on the walls and a semi-gloss finish on the ledges, frames, and doors.

Our spectacular painting team was:
Pam Siderewicz – the ring-leader extraordinaire
Michelle Benjamin
Rick Benjamin – did all the spackling himself!
Deb Bottomley
Patty Cahill
Marcia Ciak
Gary Cunningham
Carol Dandrade
Linda DeFeudis
Bob Evans
Carol Evans
Carol Frieswick
Betty Havens
Kelsey Loverude
Linda Palumbo
Karen Pendleton
Lisa Shea

Thanks to Alternatives Property Services Team for jumping in and coordinating the time to get the hanging system done, and to the installers, Leo and Jason, for installing the hanging system with a smile!

And a warm thank-you to the STAS Hanging System group, which are located right nearby in Millbury, for giving us a discount on their amazing hanging system.

We also want to thank the Uxbridge Cultural Council, who gave us a grant in 2017 to start the testing of the hanging system project. That initial section gave us the feedback and experience we needed in order to do the entire room.

Did we miss anybody? Please let us know!

With the hanging system now in place, so no more nails have to be used, this paint job should last us for years and years! It’ll also make hanging shows and adjusting shows far easier.

Here’s an image that showcases the hanging system on both the brick and the regular-wall surfaces. It features Jose Criollo with his amazing Wasp Hive sculpture.

The Uxbridge Alternatives BVAA Gallery is located at:
5 South Main Street
Uxbridge, MA

We’d love to have you come out and visit us!

Painting Deadline of September 7, 2018 for the first opening of our 61st year! The painting press is on!!

Our Blackstone Valley Art Association gallery in Uxbridge is beautiful. We have art shows there, seminars on marketing your art, workshops on photography, classes on oil painting, and much, much more. And now it’s time to give it a fresh paint job!

We are very fortunate to have experienced wall-painter Pamela Siderewicz in our midst. Our past president is leading the charge on repainting the wall surfaces. We will be painting the wall and trim light gray, while leaving the brick in its natural state. The trim will be painted a glossy light gray while the walls will be painted a washable eggshell light gray. Both will help us showcase art of all varieties, while hiding the random marks that happen in a location such as this.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!!

There are two dates in this process, and it’s important we get through both dates in order to be ready for our grand opening of the Show of Hands art show reception on Friday, September 7th, 2018. We need to get our painting done in one fell swoop. Then the hanging systems need to be installed, so that we can put the show up on the walls with that hanging system. This all needs to be done and complete before our Friday, September 7th show reception :).

We can do it!!

Friday, August 31st, 2018 4:30-6:30pm
We’ll have music and snacks. We need a group of people to assist with the preparations for painting. We’ll sand the spackle spots, vacuum the floor, and wipe down the trim and baseboards. It should be fairly quick and easy. If we can get enough people on Friday we could even start painting the trim. That way Saturday can be all about the main painting. Please let us know if you can come out on Friday.

Saturday, September 1st, 2018 8am-4pm
This is the main painting event. Again, Pam has done this many times before. We will begin in the morning with the trim. We’ll deal with getting the gloss on the trim areas. This will involve taping the walls and then small types of painting. Then, once the trim is done, we’ll move on to the larger walls. This will be where rollers and larger motions are involved. Pam has ladders and we have several ladder-fine people handling that, so you won’t have to go onto the ladders. We just need people who can handle moving rollers in lines. We’ll do two coats total, so while one section is drying we’ll work on the opposite section.

We’ll enjoy music, snacks, and fun. Let’s plan for 8am to 4pm and you can schedule a segment of that time. That way we have people rotating through to lend a hand.

We’ll need all sorts of people, so even if you’re not good with painting, you can help with other things. We’ll bring in pizza and there’s plenty of other things to eat in this area, too. Wear casual clothing :).

It’ll be a fun group event and in the end our gallery will be beautiful! Plus, with the new hanging system installed, we won’t ever be putting holes into the walls going forward, so our beautiful paint job will last years and years. This may be the only time we ever paint the walls. Don’t miss out on the fun! Get your chance to make history!

Please contact us at info@bvaa.org with when you’ll be able to help out. Together we’ll make this happen!

UPDATE:
Thank you so so much to everyone who pulled this project off! Here’s the details of how successful we were!

BVAA Wall Painting and Hanging Project Complete!

We live in a Video world nowadays and lots of people hang out on YouTube learning how to watercolor paint, do macro photography, and all sorts of other topics. It makes sense to have our art in there so it’s found, appreciated, and hopefully purchased :).

Our BVAA YouTube channel is here –

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfta8AAPBA31YFrKmRqWxqg/

It has that long, complicated URL because we don’t have 100 subscribers yet. Please subscribe to us and ask all your friends/family to subscribe. The sooner we get to 100, the more quickly we can get a better URL!

If you have a YouTube channel for your artwork, please let us know so we can promote you.

If you do NOT have a YouTube account, we’re happy to make and promote videos for you. Take a look at our channel to see three recent examples.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfta8AAPBA31YFrKmRqWxqg/

One video is a “full length” (about 10 minutes) of Laura Cenedella painting a lighthouse on a Gelli plate to make a monotype of it. While Laura was amazingly fast and finished it in the 10 minutes, you don’t need to do a whole painting for this type of video. You can show a section of a process like “how to paint a tree in watercolor” or so on. 

One video is a “short length” (about 2 minutes) of Betty Havens showing some details of her pet portrait. You could do something like that – do short videos to show stages of a process.

One is a “slideshow” (about 3 minutes) video of photography for Bob See. This is a way to showcase finished art in a way that is seen by the YouTube audience. It’s a way to get the word out there.

For the real-life-recordings, it’s easy enough for me to bring my camera and tripod out to the gallery on Saturdays to record any artists who can come to do art for a little while. You can just stop in for 15 minutes. Let me know you’re coming so I remember to bring the items with me. I advise not trying for right at 10am as I can barely get my eyeballs open in time sometimes :). It’s wiser to start for 10:30am or later.

If you’d like a slideshow video, that’s even easier. Just navigate on this site to look at your member gallery, and talk with me to make sure it’s got the images you want to feature in it. Once we get that set up, I can just plunk those images into a video with music and we’re all set.

Video is definitely the way of the world now. Having video on YouTube gets your art in front of millions upon millions of people. It’s quick, easy, free, and a great marketing tool.

Ask with any questions!

Sincerely,

Lisa Shea & the team at the BVAA

The following items of artwork have been left behind at the Blackstone Valley Art Association Uxbridge gallery from previous shows. We have made numerous attempts to contact these artists to have them pick up their artwork. If you recognize any artwork or name from this list, please let us know!

If we cannot have someone pick up their artwork by July 31, 2018, we will be planning on raffling off this artwork with proceeds to support the Alternatives community. This will be done online on our Facebook page.

Christina Brown – black and white architecture
unknown
These were part of the 2016 Tapestry Show

Mary Melzar – Fun Paintings
unknown
These were part of the 2016 Tapestry Show

Sam Tomasiello – Painting
unknown

P. Bilodeau – Painting
unknown

Sandy Bjorkman – Trio of Paintings
Tapestry 2017 – cannot find any contact info

Sandy B – Irish Owl Painting
unknown

Unknown – No Marks at All

Please let us know if you recognize any of these.

These ones are all set:

Anne Clay – large Photomontage
Elaine S. has taken these to give to Anne
These were part of the 2016 Tapestry Show

Sarah Radford – photography
picked up

Rudd Redding – monochrome architectural photography
will hopefully pick up on Saturday 8/3

Linda Farrington – bird photography
Linda is graciously donating her art to the Alternatives Art Auction!
These were part of the 2016 Tapestry Show

The Alternatives organization has a carriage house and greenhouse in Whitinsville which they are renovating. The BVT students are working on this slowly as they get grant money. The hope is that the building will be done in perhaps 3-4 years (i.e. it could be ready for use in 2022). At that point the aim is for BVT to use it for classes during the day. It might be available to the BVAA to run workshops on evenings and weekends, much like we currently use the Uxbridge gallery space.

Here are photos of the state of the buildings so far! The green house is a beautiful metal greenhouse. It would be used by the BVT for their horticultural program.

Here are our minutes from our February 20, 2018 meeting. The meeting was a critique session.

Bob Evans, President, led the meeting.

Our March workshop leader, Bob Collins with his sculptures, is unable to come on our normal Tuesday. He’s only able to come on Friday the 23rd. We agreed this would be OK.

Our bi-monthly Milford TV swap-out is coming up on Thursday, February 22nd from 6-8pm. We are taking down the “winter” show and putting up the “spring” show. The mural there is also gathering up steam. Anyone interested in working on the mural should go to the station and talk with Rob. It’s a community effort.

Thursday, March 1st is the next oil painting class with Carol Arnold.

Claflin Hill’s art show in conjunction with their music is going very well. They wrote us to talk about how much they love our art. They want us to do a better job of letting visitors know how to buy things. Lisa will make up a sign which provides that information, to hang on the panels.

The Art-Poetry show is doing well at the Worcester Public Library. In March it moves to the Blackstone library. Carol F suggested we talk with the Bellingham Library about it visiting there. Lisa will contact them.

We had a new member join us today – Giselle. Welcome, Giselle!

We talked about 52Frames.com and how it’s a free site that provides weekly photography challenges.

The Teen show is coming up. We had originally planned for this to be a selfie show but were not getting enough selfie submissions. Now it’ll be an open art show for all teens. In addition, BVAA members will submit “Massachusetts” themed artwork, to fill any leftover space in the gallery.

The Spring Show is coming up at Amazing Things in Framingham. Lisa will send a special announcement about that. She’ll provide Pam with a large-sized logo and write a press release. She’ll do different wording on each location’s posting so we can figure out where Evensi is sourcing its feed from us.

AuthorStock is coming up next weekend. Lisa will send a special announcement and distribute flyers. This is a great opportunity for us to make money, as all proceeds from the two days at Barnes & Noble in Millbury go to us.

Carol F would like for us to do a ‘procrastinator color chart’ / open paint some Saturday.

Carole P suggested a show idea for next year – a “Fakes and Forgeries” show.

There’s a bus trip to NYC coming up for $55 to see amongst other things the show with the American Watercolor Society. Lisa has sent news about this previously to the group and will send it again.

Michelle Benjamin talked about setting up a loom display / workshop at our gallery some day and also is interested in Muriel’s fabric classes, once we set those up. Muriel will be planning those once she gets back from her winter vacation.

Carol F discussed how she prices her artwork at $1 per square inch plus the frame cost. Pam prices hers at a cost per hour plus frame.

The critique session was great fun, and several of us stayed there talking until 9pm!

Feeling creative? Why not enter a fun art show? Here’s a selection of art shows with deadlines in the February 2018 and March 2018 range. See which ones you can work on!

February 2018 Art Shows