New Studio

In January I decided to buy a studio space in the town of Bourne on Cape Cod.  It is off MacArthur Boulevard (Route 28) near the village of Pocasset.

This is a pretty big step, as my studio has been our condo.  But the condo has sort of filled up with frames and mat board and foam core and pictures.  The computer and printers are in our bedroom, and my stepdaughter's bedroom fills up with prints just varnished.

The real reason I bought the space is that when I saw it, it spoke to me.  I just knew this would make a good studio.  It has big picture windows with a north view, a good front space for an office/reception and a huge back space for work tables.  One corner in the back space, near the pair of windows, should make a good corner for doing portraits.   Around both rooms there is plenty of wall space to put up pictures for a gallery.

The location on Route 28 pretty much means that anyone from Bourne to Woods Hole to Martha's Vineyard drives past.  And, for the time being, that is the community I hope to serve.

Buzzards Bay, the Canal, Gray Gables, Mashpee, Back River, Monument Beach, Tobey Island, Monk's Cove, Pocasset, Hen Cove, Patuisset, Cataumet, Squeteague, Megansett, Old Silver, Chapoquoit, Black Beach, Sippewissett, Wood Neck, Quissett, Woods Hole, Naushon, Robinson's Hole, Pasque, Quicks' Hole, Nashawena, Cuttyhunk, Menemsha.  I have been up and down the Buzzards Bay east shore since before I can remember and gone a bit beyond to the Vineyard -- I hope to do more.  

And I hope that my sign on the road will reach out to anyone with some part of their life in these places along the Bay shore, and you will stop in and see what I have to share.

Here are some pictures of the studio space before I move in.

Beach Day at Chapoquoit

"Beach Scene"

My Cape pictures go largely in a one-year cycle.  During the summer I am doing lots of shooting of seascapes and beach scenes and during the winter I am working on the files and making prints.  So the pictures I will be introducing in 2008 were largely taken in 2007.

Last summer I introduced a picture from Chapoquoit beach, slightly abstracted, with people, and with a broad view of, over and past Bowerman's beach club.  It is taken from the angle of the rock bulwarks that support the parking lot overlooking the beach.  I made a large varnished ink on paper print - 20x30 - mounted on canvas and framed and it sold to a man who lived just a few hundred yards away.

"Two Red Chairs"

This had been taken early in 2006, so in the summer of 2007 I set out to take more from this perch, and other points along the beach.  My goal was to work on something between a landscape and a street scene.....people on and along the beach and in the water.  Sunning, playing, talking, running, reading.  The visual elements included form and gesture, the sand, the sky, the sea, the vast distance you can see down Black Beach to Sippewissett, beyond to Woods Hole and out to the Elizabeth Islands.

I was conscious of the danger of prying, intruding, exposing.  I don't feel too concerned as I feel that my vantage is a respectful and celebratory one.  The beach teems with people in their summer rituals, and I only want to celebrate them.

"High Tide"

Here are a few of the images from this work.  I would like to do some kind of community show of these.  I am thinking also of making a calendar or some other print publication of the images.

There are many more and they can be seen at www.robertmanz.net under "latest work" in the "images" section.

"Father and Daughter"

Lifeguard at Chapoquoit