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Minutes of VPS General Membership Meeting: January 2003

Happy New Year!

It was great to see many of us in the T. Wood Art Gallery in Montpelier on Sunday, January 12 at the first meeting of 2003. Twelve members and three nonmembers attended Susan Abbott's highly successful 6 hour workshop on business practicalities for artists. Many were able to stay for the lively meeting that followed, to make a total of 16 members at the meeting.

During introductions, we had the pleasure of meeting new members Marie Keefe, Annie Gould and Michele Mackin who all joined at the meeting and first-time attendees Ruth Provost, Nicole Chittenden, and Wendy Boston who came all the way from Massachusetts for the meeting. Welcome aboard! Just for the record, as of January 12, 2003, we have 35 paid members.

Many thanks to Sandy Buck, who volunteered at the last meeting to arrange both the workshop with Susan Abbott and the meeting afterwards. Sandy followed through single-handedly with numerous emailed announcements, room arrangements and an excellent selection of refreshments. Thanks, Sandy! We all had a wonderful time.

There was a lot of energy in the room with lively discussion. The passion for pastels and painting and progress sizzled as we discussed plans for the future. Jan Fead did a great job keeping us on track. Here is what we covered:

1. SOCIETY ORGANIZATION: Because the membership is so scattered across our mountainous state and because we don't want to dilute interest by holding too many non-painting meetings, we decided to limit our business meetings to four to six a year, possibly in January, March, May, September and November. We will keep a balance between business meetings and group painting sessions and workshops. We decided that the society would run more smoothly if we created committees for specific duties and for our various functions. A Board of Directors (to be determined at the next business meeting in March) would meet 30 minutes ahead of the general membership to fine tune the agenda. So, think about what tasks you are willing to do to make this the best pastel society imaginable and bring your ideas to our meeting in March!

2. FEBRUARY PAINT-OUT MEETING: First of these painting meetings will be Sunday, February 16. The High School in Montpelier will not be available as originally hoped, so we are looking at the following options: Sean Dye has proposed using a free painting room at UVM which holds up to 26 painters. He will look into reserving pronto for a painting date of February 16. He said if everything works out, he would be willing to lead that meeting if we decide to hire a nude model which would run about $12-15 an hour. The members who participate would split the cost of the model. Details will be sent as soon as available in the rapid-response email format for your feedback.

Jan Fead is exploring reserving the much-smaller but still free studio at Art On Main - Community Art Center and Gallery as an option, if Bristol is an acceptable winter location, 26 miles south of Burlington and about 12 miles north and east of Middlebury. NOTE: The official topic of the paint-out was originally painting a self portrait, although, of course, everyone is free to paint whatever they wish in good company. If we can't get a model and self-portraits interest you, bring a portable mirror or two along with your usual pastel painting supplies. Self-standing tabletop mirrors are best, although hand-held works fine, too.

3. MEETING PLACES: We decided that Montpelier is a central location convenient to the largest number of members. Sandy will explore scheduling regular meetings at the Wood Art Gallery. Members from other centrally located towns are welcome to arrange a space in their town and host a meeting. We want to share the commuting fairly.

4. DOUG DAWSON WORKSHOP: Rebecca Gottesman reported on the Doug Dawson workshops scheduled for September 20 & 21 and September 22-26 in Montpelier, summarizing the progress she, Fiona Cooper Fenwick and Sandy Buck have made in arranging this workshop. (Thank you, Rebecca, Fiona and Sandy!) Their committee met Friday, January 10 to put together a packet with information and a registration form which will be mailed to all VPS members by mid-February.

Here are the facts: during Fall Foliage, master pastellist Doug Dawson will be giving two landscape workshops with a maximum of 20 students per workshop in the Montpelier area. The first will be a 2 day weekend workshop on September 20 & 21. It will be held only if the second workshop draws the minimum number of 10 students. The primary workshop will cover five days, from September 22-26. Doug will send a materials list. There will is a $50 nonrefundable registration fee required to hold a space in either workshop. You can take both. Fees for the workshops are $180 (2 day) and $450 (5 day).

We think there will be no problem filling these workshops, but they will be filled on a first come basis. Doug Dawson has an excellent reputation, and although he has listed the Vermont workshops in his ads in the Pastel Journal, VPS members will be receiving the registration forms before we send them out to Doug. So, if you are interested you should return the forms without delay.

If you have any questions in the meantime, you may contact Fiona Cooper Fenwick (fionacinvt@aol.com)

We need suggestions for likely plein air workshop locations in the Montpelier area that offer beauty and interest between the daily hours of 9:30 am- 4:30 pm, few leaf-peepers, parking and a short, easy walk from the parking area to easel sites for 10 to 20 students and a restroom within a reasonable drive.

5. VPS WEBSITE IN-PROGRESS: Michael Johnson, our long distance member in a remote mountain home in New Mexico who is a professional website designer and freelance writer as well as passionate pastellist, has offered to be our webmaster. He already has set up the skeleton of a non-fee site at geocities and will be distributing an "Official Announcement of Guidelines for Submitting Fine Art to the Official VPS Website" so we can email him information and images of members' artwork, links to members' websites and so on in digestible form.

Michael has requested that we wait until we receive the guidelines, so his system won't choke on our enthusiasm as we immediately send him 37 e-mail messages, each with a dozen attachments, no attachment of which is any smaller than 4 megabytes.

Michael is exploring inexpensive, more professional-looking web hosts who will not have all the pop-ups that speckle Geocities. He has suggested that we send our Guideline-compliant materials directly to him: mcj@sff.net. You can check out the VPS website, which now sports our official logo: www.geocities.com/vermontpastelsociety/. And you can see Michael's work on his website: www.MichaelChesleyJohnson.com . Thanks, Michael!

6. ARTWORK FOR IAPS WEBSITE: IAPS (International Association of Pastel Societies) has asked for new work for our page on their website. They will be rotating the images so each person¹s art can have a turn representing the VPS on the IAPS site.

Please send 3 digital images in jpeg file format, 300 dpi each directly to: rsimpson59@cogeco.ca. You may mail slides or photos if you do not have your images digitalized to :

Rosemary Simpson 3019 Britannia Rd. RR# 2 Milton ON. L9T 2X6 Canada

Sean Dye has an option for those lacking digitalized images. He has offered to make digital photos at his studio in St. George on Monday or Wednesday evenings, or M,W,F mornings. Most Monday evenings Sean and his intern, Sarah, will be taking slides of his artwork in 35mm and 645 formats. If anyone would like visit to learn this process, please contact Sean 802-482-6421 or seandyestu@aol.com to confirm a time. Thanks, Sean!

6. IAPS CONVENTION: The IAPS Fifth Biennial Convention is May 7-11 this year in Albuquerque, NM. Sean has gone alone previously and would love to have more VPS members there this year to hear the seminars, see demos and examine new materials and hob-knob with the rest of the pastel world. The suggestion of renting a school bus and driving out en mass was briefly entertained and regretfully declined. View the convention details at www.pastelinternational.com .

7. WORKSHOP ENDORSEMENT POLICY: The society decided there should be a policy in place to approve or deny requests for workshops that are sponsored or endorsed by VPS. Jan Fead will develop a list of criteria and create an application for prospective instructors to be presented at our next business meeting in March. Jan indicated that she will be one of our first applicants as she has several great ideas for VPS sponsored workshops. We decided that to establish a committee of three members to consider the applications.

8. ROSALIE NADEAU WORKSHOP tentatively set for the weekend of 5/31-6/1: VPS decided to forego the committee approval process and "grandfather in" a workshop suggested by Joyce Kahn. Last summer Joyce took a workshop through the Pastel Society of Cape Cod where she found herself paying more attention to a fellow student, Rosalie Nadeau. Rosalie is a nationally-known artist and teacher for and member of the Pastel Society of Cape Cod. She and Joyce have discussed bringing her in to teach a VPS-sponsored 2 day workshop on the weekend of May 31, and June 1. Rosalie's fee would apparently be a reasonable $70 for a minimum of 10 students. VPS decided unanimously to have Joyce continue to explore the details, and a workshop commitee was formed when Skye Forest and Helene Amses voluteered to work with her on this.

9. MARCH SLIDE WORKSHOP: Joyce also is looking into setting up a 1/2 day workshop for our March meeting about taking slides of art work with Robert Brunelle, Jr. a Vermont artist from Jericho who has been doing his own slides for 25 years. Thanks, Joyce!

10. RAPID-RESPONSE EMAIL POLICY: Email has been approved as a method for reaching most of the membership when time-sensitive decisions must be made between meetings. The cancellation of the November meeting was cited as an example of how email can be the most effective way to accomplish rapid communication and quick feedback. In most cases, members would have a week in which to reply.

11. UPCOMING SHOWS: We are still waiting to hear if the Southern Vermont Art Center will host a VPS show. It was suggested that we begin the process of making the Arts Alive Show at Union Station an annual event. We all decided that The Wood Art Gallery is a nice space and has good hours for a show. There is a formal application process that Sandy Buck has offered to explore. She will report on this at our next meeting.

12. SOCIETY SECRETARY: VPS is currently looking for a member to serve as secretary. The duties will include recording and emailing minutes and creating our newsletter. This will be discussed at the next meeting.

13. MEMBERSHIP NEWS: Sandy Buck has created and will be the keeper of the membership database. She handed out impressive copies of the current list of paid members. Thank you, again, Sandy!

Rene Schall has offered to continue to be the contact for new members and receive the membership forms and dues ($30 per year, due August 1 each year) as the membership chair. She distributed a draft of the VPS description she has been working on to give to prospective members. Rene asked us to read the letter, add our comments and/or corrections and return it to her by the end of January. Thank you, Rene! mail to: rschall@together.net.

Sandy explained that she will be able to print address labels from the database for VPS mailings and members who request them. Sandy will also be able to sort the database into lists of workshop attendees, paid registrations, volunteers, committees, etc.

14. CALL TO ACTION:

VPS urgently needs your input on these topics:

Thanks to everyone for your hard work to keep us together. 2003 will be the best year ever! Happy Painting!

Regards,

Sean Dye, Jan Fead and Sandy Buck

JAN FEAD¹S COMMENTS ON THE SUSAN ABBOTT WORKSHOP:

It was very very good! Susan Abbott certainly knows the business of being an artist and presented it well, giving participants a folder full of printouts to help us continue the process. (NOTE TO SELF AND OTHERS: That folder holds keys to doors and walls that Susan faced on her journey. The worksheets represent an organized way to take deliberate steps along her tried-and-true path towards financial and other success as an artist. It would be easy to bury the folder in a pile of important papers, never to be used, only to be glimpsed with guilt every 4-6 months. Don¹t let this opportunity to slide by. Carpe diem!)

The most important thing I personally got from the workshop was finally understanding the importance of setting goals at different levels. This means figuring out the distant five year goals, the closer year's goals, the month's goals, week's goals and finally the day's goals. Susan showed how these goals tell an artist what to do this minute. What a concept! No more struggling to find time, and then wondering what to do with it once I get it. Susan added that setting deadlines for these goals propels a person past the point of inertia and into making more art... which all of us would like to do.

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