Community Corner
Rocky Point Artists on Display at North Shore Library
A painter and a paleontologist will launch their displays at a reception Sunday.
Two Rocky Point natives are being featured at the North Shore Public Library this month, showing off their two very different forms of art.
Local painter Joe Miller will have the work he describes as “realist with a touch of impressionism” on display all month at the library as its featured artist.
Miller, a retired art director, oversaw covers in his former life for many of the Doubleday book clubs, including the Literary Guild, Science Fiction Book Club and Mystery Guild.
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He didn’t pursue painting until he left the workaday world in 2002.
“At first it took a little while getting used to being free,” he said. “Then I asked myself what I really wanted to do and that was paint. I just love to paint.”
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One of the first paintings he created when he started to follow his new passion was a portrait of his grandson. Mostly, Miller said, he takes inspiration from local scenes, such as Mt. Sinai Dock, which is featured in one of the works in this month’s show.
“I try to paint as often as I can,” he added.
Miller shares his passion for art with his wife Carol. She was the library’s featured artist in December and had her photography on display for the month. Together, the couple belongs to the East End Arts Council, the North Shore Art Guild and the Art Forum group that meets monthly at the library.
Michael Walsh is showing off a very different kind of art at the library this month.
He’ll be displaying fossils he’s collected over a 35-year career, some that go back as far as half a billion years.
Walsh, who grew up in Ohio, said he specializes in Midwestern fossils and possesses a collection of relics that shows the evolution of shells on the East Coast starting 70 million years ago.
He’s donated many fossils from the Paleozoic period, which spans from 550 million to 180 million years ago, to museums and universities including Ohio State.
Walsh said he’s been drawn to fossils since he was 5 years old.
“There is something about finding a fossil, uncovering it in a rock in the earth. It’s hundreds of millions of years old, yet the impression can be so vivid you feel it was alive only a moment ago,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in Darwinism, but at the same time this shows God’s grandeur.”
The library will host a grand opening reception Sunday from 2-4:30 p.m. to celebrate the new exhibits and honor the two local artists.
