Aunspaugh's Exhibit at MAC Gallery...

Ball of Crap - Watercolor by Richard Aunspaugh

MAC (Murray Arts Council) has had a nice exhibit of Works by Richard Aunspaugh. This was a pretty big show for our little North Georgia gallery (Chatsworth, Georgia, in Murray County). We had a successful, exciting opening, with a great buffet of food from the chefs at Cohutta Springs Conference Center. It was all very elegant, but informal. We had some home schoolers who made our event as their field trip; that was great. The artist spent some time with a little girl, explaining how his watercolors came about, and how to get started on the drawings. "There are no rules," he told her. They both worked on a little drawing, which she took home to complete. Her parents were thrilled that she got to talk to the artist and have her questions answered. They really connected to the artist's paintings. In fact, everyone seems to have connected to Aunspaugh's "Ball-of Crap" drawings and paintings. The works are both light and mysterious, which is interesting. We've enjoyed having this exhibit in town.

 The show will be coming down soon. Our gallery is the project of a small, non-profit, arts and cultural organization in a little town which has had very little in the way of art or art programs. Our little non-profit has struggled. We don't have a volunteer base; hence, the task of keeping the gallery open fell to me. I gave it some Fridays and most of my Saturdays for the months of March, April, and May. Dave did a few Saturdays for me. I volunteered my time to do some news releases ~ glad to do that. We were working with another artist for an upcoming show, which ran into some snafus. April became pretty stressful and hectic (considering that this was "volunteerism," not paid work). Now that the schedule and logistics have been ironed out, and the excitement is over, there's a bit of a let-down. It's hard to sustain programs such as ours, with no foundational support, a sparse membership base (not yet grown), and very few volunteers. There are so many other good, needy programs... and working people have little time for volunteerism. Even so, we've managed to keep our gallery open, and have presented some pretty nice shows, all things considered.