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LAWRENCE SCHWINGER
MEETING SUMMARY:
Meeting Date: January 12, 1991.
Meeting Site: De Parto Residence, Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
Official Attendance: 22.
Meeting Program: Talk by science fiction artist.
Notes:
Lawrence Schwinger was one of three artists (guest speaker Darrell K Sweet was another) who signed contracts to work exclusively with Ballantine Books for a number of years.
Meeting Memories:
Newsletter account:
The following account is reprinted with permission from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 1991 Phillip De Parto:
On Friday, January 11, 1991, the evening before our scheduled meeting, it snowed moderately hard. Although the weatherman had predicted that the snow would end during the night and that it would be a good deal warmer on Saturday, our invited guest, artist Lawrence Schwinger, was less than enthused with the projected drive to the Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, an unfamiliar trek which would involve a 45 minute commute. Rather than risk losing him completely, we did a last minute site change. The meeting was instead held at the home of Philip De Parto in Lyndhurst. This moved the meeting about 35 minutes closer to the home of the guest and placed him on roads both more familiar and also more heavily traveled.
Word reached most people of the change. The early birds, who included Mary Anne Denny, Lissanne Lake, Charles Garofalo, Anthony Pawlak (in from Pennsylvania on semester break), and Alan Reid amused themselves by playing pool or yakking away. Mark Blackman and Eileen Madison made it in by bus (and can tell war stories of the experience), and more people wound up showing their face than anyone expected. This even included newcomer James La Barre of Chappaqua who did not get the change-of-venue message on his answering machine.
The meeting was held in the basement. As Lawrence Schwinger does not have a slide presentation, the basement layout presented no problems. He simply placed each piece (he brought well over thirty paintings, plus sketches and his portfolio) face up on the pool table and everyone crowded around.
The original artwork is always much more impressive than a slide or cover, and everyone was suitably impressed. Phil ran to his library on occasion to pull out a book to place it side-by-side with the original.
Mr Schwinger ws both interesting and informative, and entertained any number of side discussions and questions. Somewhere around 8:30 PM, we broke for dinner, Alan Reid being kind enough to coordinate things on that end.
Things really worked out well. A suggestion was made to make the De Parto house the permanent meeting site of the club, and to appropriate money for Phil's parents to go out to the movies once a month. The motion was defeated.
After the meeting was over, a group of people watched a videotape of a program about the early days of the space program in one room, while another group watched the episode of STAR TREK, THE NEXT GENERATION taped earlier that evening. As Phil told Dennis Mc Cunney later, it was the tekkies on one floor and the trekkies on another. After the tapes were over, about eight of us hit the Arlington Diner.