Dear Japan

Some artists I’m happy to know have organized “Dear Japan,” an exhibit and sale of small, affordable artwork to benefit victims of the recent disasters in Japan. This small image was created for the show. It’s a pen and ink and watercolor painting of a Texas Ebony bonsai tree in the bonsai collection at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden — a seamless synthesis of Texas, Brooklyn, and Japanese themes into one 4” x 6” image (9” x 12”, framed). That may be a first. (As always, click the image to enlarge it.)

The work will be exhibited and for sale along with many others on Saturday, June 4, from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Art Connect New York Gallery, 491 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY. (From 7:00 to 8:00 the work that has sold will be packed up, and at 8:00 you walk out the door with your purchase.) The maximum price for any piece of work will be $200. Contributing artists include, well, there’s a bunch of us — 170! Read more on Facebook, here, or follow the Dear Japan blog, here. All the event details are on the Dear Japan blog here. I hope I’ll see you at the show!

End days

Saturday, April 9 is the last day for my show at the Brooklyn Public Library. (All about it, here.) Thanks to the BPL for the show, and to everyone who’s been by to take a look!

Belated blogging: an exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library

A few weeks ago I alluded here to installing an exhibit, and I haven’t written anything about it since. Am I really that bad at using blogs and social media for self-promotion? Or does my lackadaisical, half-witted approach make the posts seem all that more “genuine”? Don’t answer that. Here’s all about the show:

I’m grateful to the Brooklyn Public Library for hosting an exhibit of my work in the Youth Wing at the Central Library on Grand Army Plaza. The exhibit opened on February 8 and runs to April 9. In the show are about forty original drawings and watercolor paintings from The Racecar Alphabet; Lightship; Moonshot; The Hinky-Pink, by Megan McDonald; Ballet for Martha, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan; The True Gift, by Patricia MacLachlan; and Avi’s Poppy Stories novels. The exhibit operates under the title “Drivers, Dancers, Mice & Moon: Children’s Book Art by Brian Floca.” I think I had the old rhyme “tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,” in my head while trying to come up with a name for the show. Or was I thinking of John le Carré?

Regardless, I am, again, grateful to the BPL, and especially to Manager of Exhibitions Barbara Wing, for the show. It was an honor to have work in the “Drawn in Brooklyn” exhibit with many talented friends a few months earlier, and it’s an honor to be back in the Youth Wing now. And, it was a surprisingly pleasant thing for me to blow the dust off the files at home and pull out the original art for this show. I’m always impressed by how closely production departments and printers get to the originals — but there’s nothing quite like the actual ink and pencil and paper. Pulling the work out of the files was like excavating old friends. I hope you’ll have a chance to see them!

More on the exhibit is at the BPL web site, here.

How I spent my Saturday

At the library!

I’m excited to have my work included in a show opening this week at the Brooklyn Public Library, “Drawn in Brooklyn.” The show is curated by John Bemelmans Marciano and features the work of 34 children’s book illustrators who live in Brooklyn. (One of them is the talented Sergio Ruzzier, who put together a list of all the artists in the show, with links to their web sites, on his blog. I suppose I could do the same, but why reinvent the wheel? Sergio’s list is here. Grazie, Sergio.)

My contributions to show are original drawings and paintings from Ballet for Martha, Moonshot, Poppy’s Return, and The Hinky-Pink. Several of us with work in the show are also exhibiting process drawings in display cases in the library’s youth wing. In my case (so to speak) there’s a soup-to-nuts presentation on the making of The Racecar Alphabet: initial inspiration, sketches, storyboards, book dummies, revisions, original art, and a scale model Mercedes-Benz 300SL (1952). It’s an honor to have work up in the show. I hope you’ll be able to come by and see it! Exhibit details are here.