Report on Franklin Lakes Reception and my first sale of a painting!

The reception was held at the Franklin Lakes, NJ library on May 7th from 2 to 4 pm.

I was not at all sure how many would attend. Besides posting on Facebook and Twitter, my Twitter entry was re-Tweeted once or twice. I put in in my church's (1ST Baptist Hackensack) bulletin> put it in the Fineartamerica sites calendar, plus other notifications.

I guestimated for 50 people. I had the following menu - 1) had a friend (Penny Beck) make crumb cake which is delicious, almost as good as the crumb cake at B&W bakery in Hackensack (look it up), a cheese/pepperoni/cracker/grape plate, a hummus and pita chip platter and tortellini skewers ( cooked tortellini, cheese cubes and grape tomatoes marinated in Italian Dressing and skewered)
The skewers were a surprise hit

In the gallery room, I set up the guestbook and as little keepsakes I had made 50 refrigerator magnets each of four paintings made via Vistaprint. Those proved popular also. I also had the artist bio there. Franklin Lakes is one of the few libraries that do not allow any form selling whatsoever on property. I had put a section in my bio on buying items based on the paintings thru Fineartamerica, Zazzle and acouple of others, and that paragraph was deleted from the final bio.

In all 30 came and had a great time. A friend Candy Beck finally decided to buy on of my paintings - the Goat Island Lighthouse Newport. here is Candy standing next to her new possession.

I ended up with about 30 people showing up. They liked the magnets but were reluctant to take all 4, but I encouraged them to have a complete set. a friend was supposd to do the music, but got his dates mixed up, so I had brought my cd player for inbetween sets. I went to the library's excellent CD section and got some jazz CDs. It worked out fine. A few people who said they were coming had to bow out at the last moment. The left over crumbcake was re-purposed for Sunday's fellowship time between services at 1st Baptist where it was a big hit and the extra hummus will be used other places.

Now I have to set up the Seacaucus reception.
For the whole series of pictures, check out my Facebook album
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150241501271474.373105.729976473&l=14ac500d8e

Finally - I will be posting art quotes, but this one says it all for me. I'm a committed Christian and I believe my painting is a God given gift and every painting is an act of worship.
here it is :

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. ~André Gide