Be a part of a creative community…Get out your paints!
By Lele Galer, Columnist, The Times
Last week I wrote a bit about the life-changing power of one teacher to inspire hundreds of adults to get out and create and exhibit their work. We all have oil paints or pastels in a drawer somewhere, maybe it is the time to take them out and rekindle that creative flame? Sometimes it takes the community of an arts organization to give us that nudge to give creativity a try.
I recently joined an art association called, DVAL, the Delaware Valley Art League which is a group of almost 300 artists who meet monthly at the spacious and lovely Paoli Presbyterian Church in Paoli. The members come from Chester County, Delaware Valley and Montgomery Counties for the most part, and are in the above 55 age range. I joined DVAL because I kept seeing their great exhibition venues that were exclusive to DVAL associates, and I was intrigued.
An artist demonstration at a recent Delaware Valley Art League meeting.
For example, last summer DVAL was the first arts organization to do a plein air competition at Longwood Gardens in almost ten years. How did they get that gig?! The art competition ended with a swank cocktail and hors d’oeuvres art show and sale in the Longwood Banquet hall. It was lovely and well attended. The Longwood Plein Air event was only one of 15 different art shows that DVAL organized last year. It is not easy to maintain a membership roster, offer a variety of art show and art workshop opportunities, manage publicity, prizes, newsletters and run monthly meetings and demonstrations. How do they do it? I went to my first meeting to discover the secret of their success.
The first thing you get when you join DVAL is a thick book of rules, a list of scheduled meetings, shows, directions and membership names and addresses. Among the list of members are some of the most talented local artists of our area, including Diane Cannon, Madeleine Kelly, and Ana Delia McCormick. The dedicated DVAL Board are very well organized and help DVAL keep a strict schedule. Every month there is a meeting, an art demonstration, an art jurying, and an art show. There are also extra art shows and events throughout the year.
Ana Delia McCormick, with prize winning Still Life with Flowers. Ana Delia is a DVAL member and also the donating artist for the upcoming 2015 Chadds Ford Art Show.
I showed up to my first meeting, dropped off my two paintings to be juried (promptly by 12:30pm) and joined the meeting room where about 100 artists were chatting over coffee and cookies. It was a very warm, supportive atmosphere, with lots of introductions and I immediately was glad that I had come. I didn’t hear any art bragging or posturing, instead I heard people saying how happy they were to see one another and sharing the delight of an interesting art experience they had had. They all seemed to be in the room because they loved being there and were excited to learn something fun and new regarding art.
Stan Sperlak demonstrating his pastel techniques to the DVAL membership meeting that I attended.
At 12:55 people took their seats, and the meeting started promptly at 1pm. A trip to New York City museums was announced and various artists got up and told everyone where they were showing that month. Directly after the short meeting, the scheduled demonstration artist, pastel artist Stan Sperlak, started his lecture on his life in art. He was very engaging and offered lots of insightful advice on living well on an artist budget, and working with pastels, and then he quickly sketched a lovely pastel for us to understand his methodology. After the demonstration, he sold some of the supplies that he had recommended, and people tried to sign up for his DVAL workshop (which was full immediately!).
So, for my first experience with DVAL, in three hours, I had juried into an art show in Bryn Mawr, met a bunch of nice people, heard an artist lecture, seen a demonstration of pastel, and bought a lot of new art supplies. That is three hours well spent!
A First Place winner in a recent DVAL competition: Laurie Lamont Murray’s “Where Swimming Things Prowl”
I really enjoyed seeing all of these DVAL members coming together to just enjoy each other’s company and learn more about doing art for the joy of doing art. An organization like DVAL gives accomplished artists and artistically inclined people the opportunity to get out there and create, and then exhibit together just for the fun of it. Their sales are very good too as are the prizes!
There are a handful of wonderful arts organizations in our area, and DVAL is one of them. If you haven’t picked up a paintbrush since elementary school, then you should take a few classes first, but DVAL is definitely not just for seasoned painters either. This is a warm and friendly place, where the organizers are very hard working and rule abiding. If you are a flakey artist with no sense of time or an “it’s all about me” artist, then you wouldn’t last through the first meeting. Other than that, this might well be the place for you!
www.delawarevalleyartleague.com
Lele Galer is an artist who has chaired numerous art shows, taught art history and studio art, public art and has chaired, written and taught the Art in Action Art Appreciation series for the UCFD schools for the past 12 years. She worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and wrote for the Asociated Press in Rome. She has been dedicated to Art History and art education for most of her adult life. Lele and her husband Brad own Galer Estate Winery in Kennett Square.
