JACK RABBIT SPORTS ART NIGHT

I sometimes fancy myself an artist.  I have no formal training whatsoever, the closest I got to an art school was when I attended Cooper Union's Engineering school, across the street from the Foundation Building, which housed classes for Arts and Architecture students.  But I can draw pretty well and of late took an interest in modular origami.  Sure I've been making sonobes and giving them to friends etc but I can use more exposure.  When I learned about Jack Rabbit Sports' Art Night at Union Square, I immediately signed up.  There's no fee to enter and there's a prize of $50 gift certificate, plus wine, cheese, and crackers as refreshments.

It was an interesting experience, especially for someone totally new to the "gallery" scene, that is, displaying one's work for others to see.  I mistakenly thought that the artworks would be clustered around the back of the store, perhaps on several tables.  Instead, the different works were scattered in many locations throughout the store, which was a good thing as more than ten people brought in stuff to exhibit.  Some works were put on horizontal surfaces like tabletop or cabinet-top, while others were placed on easels.  There was even a video and it was displayed on a TV screen connected to a laptop.  Each exhibit was assigned a number then customers, friends of exhibitors, etc voted for the winner of the evening.  I happened to have arranged to meet a Freecycler at the store, to give away a LaCie external hard drive.  She voted for me so I at least had two votes, but it was not enough to win, heh heh.

One thing I learned from the exhibit was that you need to have contact info readily available.  A few artists had business cards placed near their work, should anyone want to contact them afterward it would be just a phone call or email message away.  On the days leading up to the event, I spent much time designing the images on the sonobes, but did not once think about having business cards to go with my exhibit.  At the end of the event, a neighbor exhibitor wanted to keep in touch with me, so I wrote my email address on a spare sonobe module for her.  That's it!  Next time I'll have my contact info pre-printed on a bunch of sonobe units, all kept inside a half-finished sonobe, which will look like a bowl.

I walked around a bit in the beginning and took the photos below.

I took this photo at an angle to show that it's a piece of wood with depth.  The picture was burnt onto the wood, no mistake to be made!  Note that the design around the picture was cut through the wood. Note also the business cards on the side.

My PPTC team mate loves bridges and painted a picture of her favorite bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge.

Illustrations by Eileen San Felipe.  I tried vector drawing and never got far.  Why, I didn't get too far with bit-mapped drawing on the computer either.  I still do pencil-and-paper, or of late, white-board and dry- or wet-erase markers.

My very own sonobes!  From right to left, the unfolded papers, 6-unit sonobe (cube, duh!), 12-unit piece, and 30-unit piece.  The larger pieces feature various photos and text related to running.  For brownie points, I also showed the Four Jacks, which shows the address and phone number of the four Jack Rabbit Sports stores in New York City.

See the complete collection of all the works exhibited at

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151485803853713.1073741825.48482283712&type=1

courtesy of Lorena from Jack Rabbit.