Raritan Valley Arts Association
Newsletter

RARITAN VALLEY ARTS ASSOCIATION est. 1939

Spring Song Greetings:

What a time to celebrate! Easter and Passover! First forsythia and daffodils! Frogs and chipmunks coming out of hibernation, and much more! Like on April 30th you will want to come to a terrific demo by Doris Terris, who will be doing pastel over watercolors. Doris is a multi-award winner; you’ve seen her Best in Shows at Lamington, and she recently won First in Garden State Watercolor Society’s Full Members’ Show. So come, 7:30 in our regular rooms A & B, Monday April 30th, at the Somerset County Library. Eleanor DeMott and Rosemary Zangara will be doing our hospitality (Thank you, Eleanor! Thank you, Rosemary!). You’ll have a good time!

And did we have a good time with Carl Burger! A riotous time! Oh, yes, we did, and we saw a vibrant demonstration and also learned a lot about the different art and auction galleries in Lambertville, New Hope, and Stockton. Enough to make a field trip there. Or-a long field trip to the prestigious Butler Institute for American Art in Ohio, where Carl is having a big show this spring. Linda Arnold and Donna Souren provided refreshments and we thank them.

There are still some places on the comfortable bus for our trip to the Metropolitan Museum of art on April 28th but you’ll want to send a check soon! Because the AWS Show will be over by then, we will get to spend the whole day at the Met! Finally you’ll have enough time to visit the ____________ section you’ve been meaning to get to! Or you can visit another museum on that "Museum Mile". We meet at 8:15 am at the upper parking lot of the Somerset County Library (i.e., near the VoTech School) and the bus leaves at 8:30. We’ll be back about 6. All that art and all that arty camaraderie, and some snacks on the way home for $28! Please mail your check made out to RVAA to Debbie Hughes, 255 Falmouth Place, Bridgewater, NJ 08807. You can bring your significant other, your art-loving kid, your best buddies! But do come, and sign up pronto. Thank you, Debbie!

Once again a big THANK YOU to Thelma Canty for chairing our lovely show at the Jewish Community Center on Talamini Road in Bridgewater. Our reception on Sunday, March 11th was a festive occasion which we all enjoyed.

Linda Arnold and Thelma Canty

Totally Awesome Fruit Salad

We also thank both Thelma and President Linda Arnold for providing the lovely and delicious refreshments! Our Judge, Joan McKinney carefully made her choices—there were so many handsome works from which to choose—and Linda presented the awards, as follows: First---Pat Barnabeo, Second---Diana Patton, Third---Judy Hummer, Fourth---Elsa Herrmann, Fifth---Doug Axmann, Sixth---Thelma Canty, and Seventh---Christiane Silla. Congratulations to all! (pick-up of the show is on April 11^th, from 10 until 12 noon).

First Place - Pat Barnabeo

Second Place - Diana Wilkoc Patton

And now-RVAA IS ENTERING THE COMPUTER AGE---oh, yeah, we are; we are! RVAA now has its own website and that website is www.raritanvalleyarts.org Your editor and her husband, Gard, who many of you know, decided that such a fine arts organization should have a computer presence and so we made the website-actually your editor only gives ideas and input—Gard is the computer wizard. Although we are online now for all to enjoy, the website is still being created because we need you, the members, to send, by snail mail or email, two photos (or .jpgs) of two of your works, for

You will need two clear photos of your work (any size, although it might be nice to have them 4” x 6” or larger). I don’t need to keep the photos. I’ll just scan them in and make .jpg versions (I can do that now!)

You want to include on a separate piece of paper, your name, and one of the following pieces of contact information:

1) your email address and website URL (if you have one)
or 2) your address
or 3) your phone number

I would think an email address is the most private, but it’s up to you. Please include the title and medium of the painting (we are not putting prices on the paintings, because we are so darn classy, but interested people can obviously get in touch with you). Only if you wish it, you may include a bio of up to 125 words or so, and we’ll put that with your work.

Again, you can snail mail me your photos; no computer expertise is necessary. However, if you use email to send .jpg files of your work, you can send .jpg files to . It’s good to send a .jpg file which is 250 pixels wide, plus whatever height the picture turns out to be when the width is 250 pixels wide. If you can’t resize the picture send what you have and we will resize it.

WE ARE THINKING THAT YOU CAN HAVE THE OPTION OF CHANGING YOUR TWO PHOTOS EACH YEAR. ALSO, “FEATURED ARTISTS” WILL BE RUN, IN THE ORDER WE RECEIVE PHOTOS, AND WILL CHANGE EVERY MONTH, OR PERHAPS THREE WEEKS, DEPENDING ON HOW MANY OF YOU SUBMIT.

You can go right now to www.raritanvalleyarts.org and look at us. If you haven't a computer, the next time you go to the library, you can go online there and see our website. And if you click onto the “Links” page of our website, guess what? You’ve only to click on "Cheap Joe", for example, and there is Cheap Joe and his whole catalogue! Or click onto other art association sites and see what they are doing. Not that we are excited or anything, but we are! We hope you will be, too.

Your editor realizes you want to know the cost of this, and it’s free. RVAA site is being “hosted” by but one can’t tell this by going to our website. Not that it’s a secret, it just doesn’t have to show that my website is hosting ours.

Lots of news- upcoming shows to enter include those of the Lamington Presbyterian Church (Rebecca Walters, 908/287-1109), St. Marks up in Mendham (973/543-4471), and that of the Visual Arts Center in Summit-908/273-9121). FURTHERMORE there is a terrific show now at the Morris Museum of Arts and Sciences—“Gerberich”s Gadgetry-Art That Move-through August 19th, more on that later, but your editor was vastly amused by it—and there is also at the Zimmerli in New Brunswick , through July 22, “Through the Night: Children’s Book Illustrations from the Rutgers Collection”. Finally, there is a great show at the D & R Greenway Trust “Barn” Gallery (located on 60 acres off Rosedale Road in Princeton) of the works of Garden State Watercolor Society members. The show runs until May 14th; hours are 1-3 pm, Thurs, Fri., Sat.; phone number is 609/924-4646. The show is on two floors, the “barn” is surrounded by fields and trees and you can explore and/or paint and sketch yourselves there!

MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

The juried show of the Bernardsville Library is up now until the end of the month. We’ve heard that the following RVAA members have works in the show: LINDA ARNOLD, KATHY BLAIR, RITA GORKY, JUDY HUMMER, JOAN MCKINNEY, DIANA PATTON, LIB RYMAN, DONNA SOUREN, and DOROTHY VARONE (if we’ve missed anyone, please contact me).

The Bridgewater Township Show is recently over and many RVAA members were part of it, and also won awards-these include ALKA DALAL, SYLVIA MARIA GLESMANN (Honorable Mention-Professional category), JOAN MCKNNEY (First, and an Honorable Mention-Professional) DIANA PATTON (Honorable Mention-Professional), PATRICIA BARNABEO (Honorable Mention-Non-professional category), KATHY BLAIR, SHERRY ENGELBERG, WILLIAM GILBERT, RITA GORKY (Second-Non-Pro), MARY LOU GUIDIDAS (Honorable Mention-Non-Pro), JUDY HUMMER (Honorable Mention-Non-Pro), JIM LAUBACH, FRANCES LOUISE MARELL, GERI OLDMAN, CHRISTIANE SILLA (Third-Non-Pro), and DONNA SOUREN.

So! How busy are we! How excited are we! How fast are we going to send your editor YOUR NEWS AND YOUR PHOTOS OF YOUR WORK?!!

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I, __________________________________________________ WILL BE GOING ON THE BUS TRIP, with _______________________ guests. Phone number is ______________________________ . Enclosed is my check for $28. made out to RVAA. Please mail to Debbie Hughes, 255 Falmouth Place, Bridgewater 08807.

Previous Newsletters

March 2007 newsletter