In addition to all that is described below this post, I also had to think about promotional efforts. I thought it would be easy to do a low-tech poster exchange with the New York Transit Museum, which is only two blocks away, and got a contact from the arts organization. They agreed to it, and I took the poster over on the day of the opening. Very excited that they placed it for me.
I contacted several Brooklyn blogs, but didn’t get responses; made some posts on Facebook, tweeted, and got some word of mouth going. I asked my friend Jill Harrison of //For the Love of Brooklyn photo blog if she would be willing to photograph the opening party, because she has an incredible talent for photographing at night—she makes everything look luminous and jewel-like, and was thrilled that she agreed. She even invited me to do an interview for her blog!
A new image for the front page of my website, and a news page with information about the show, were added with the help of Hathead Studios, who designed the website.
Another low-tech effort was made easy by the extreme friendliness of the neighborhood where the gallery is situated—since it was so hot, I always had the door open, and people would just pop their heads in and ask what was going on, I would tell them, give them a flier, and invite them to stop in.
To recap, some before and after pictures
Friday morning I got to the space with 4 last framed works and got them hanging. The solid metal gate was firmly in place. I emailed S. and he came over and got the workman to come and finally replace it. Oh—the transformational power of sunlight—it was as if the space doubled in size! He also made sure that the block was power-washed the night before, brought a bright green chair (I was able to pick from a selection) and a bench for the space, and had the front of the window scraped and cleaned. I was really happy that they were able to do these things for the show.
All the niggling doubts I had the night before were utterly eradicated. The show was on!
Thursday. The day before the show. Most of the artwork was unpacked and ready to hang, but I had to wait until 5pm before 4 correctly re-cut red frames came by second day air. Those were assembled late Thursday and brought over to the gallery on Friday.
I had an idea about a red felt flutterwall installation of rough sketches to break up the monotony of the extreme symmetry of the framed works, but I was taking a calculated risk that I could actually make it work, since I hadn’t tested it out. I searched 4 stores for T-pins long enough to work, breathing a sigh of relief when I found some. Behind the red felt is a mishmash of cardboard scraps (my second, desperate choice of material, since I couldn’t find the cork panels I thought we had at home) stapled to the framing, then I attached the pages with the pins. I wanted them to dangle loosely and flutter when people walked by for a little kinetic energy.
Once I got that to work, I began attaching decals to the windows, which was satisfying, although I couldn’t see what the front window decal looked like from the street because the solid metal gate was still in the way.
Meanwhile, Luke wrestled with the large giclee prints, slated for the front window, which were heavily curled from transit. I didn’t have frames and bought a random assortment of fasteners ranging from velcro to key rings. I had some idea that the prints were not to be pierced by nails—as if velcro isn’t the worst idea ever, although that was my desperation level strategy if nothing else worked—and thought that the key rings were strong enough and strange enough in this context that people wouldn’t realize what they were. So 8 mini key rings went around the edges of the paper, which was really thick and heavy, and then nails held the key rings to the wall without damaging the paper. Honestly, I thought it was a horrible solution and looked really amateurish, but this was 10 pm on Thursday night, and the essential thing was that they were hanging on the wall.
I really winged it with approximate visual measurements for the hanging shelf for the books, but it all worked out.
Where we were about 3 days before opening. We laid the temporary floor on Wednesday, and it totally transformed the space. I wanted to use this product called elephant bark, a roll of black exercise matting with red flecks in it, but it was prohibitively expensive—I would have needed 2 rolls at $600 per roll, and I thought about approaching them and asking for a price break, but just couldn’t take the time to do it. Instead, I found at a big box home store—2x2’ dark gray interlocking exercise mat floor tiles, $18 for a set of 4. We bought all that were on the display—7 of ‘em. They were really easy to cut and work with. And amazingly, the EXACT number we needed. I had wanted to get an extra one for mistakes.
I kept the muslin tied up until hanging so it wouldn’t get dirty on the floor, but did a test drape. I wasn’t necessarily anticipating a slightly translucent quality—it’s possible to see the shadowy skeletons of the framing and tiles and mural wallpaper behind it, but I decided it didn’t bother me in the context of the show.
About midway through the process, this is how the space was looking. I bought 12 yards of 120” wide muslin to tent the 117” high ceilings. Since it is a temporary gallery, I liked that it would look like a tent. Two small walls were tented in red felt for installations. I went online, sourced lighting at ikea, made sure it was in stock, took the shortcut to the lighting section and got out of there. Three sets of double halogen spots were $4.99 each. Luke rewired them so they would plug in. We added 2x4s at the specific height that I wanted to hang the work. I used leftover paint from my apartment to paint the ceiling. I painted the ceiling fan white and removed the blades, because they were casting enormous shadows on the walls. Luke made a box of corrugated plastic to cover a repulsively greasy fluorescent light fixture that was jutting into the room from the restaurant next door.
A former production editor at Condé Nast, I’ve definitely put in my share of overtime at the job. A 14-hour day was not unheard of at closing. But I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as I did orchestrating all the elements to pull off this art show. Hard as it was, it was also exhilarating because I had a vision of what a crappy space could transform into, and organically, almost effortlessly the ideas of composing the space just happened in my head. The difficult aspect was physically manifesting my ideas, but I was extremely grateful that I wasn’t hung up on the creative, mental part of putting it all together, and also grateful that the art organization that I was working with just let me do whatever I wanted, and didn’t try to control the process.
Part of why my mental problem-solving was so effortless, I think, is that I knew I had support to back me up, otherwise I would have been paralyzed with fear and botched it. My best friend and spouse, Luke, is my main bastion of support. He was there for me emotionally, there for me in the framing factory, and he was absolutely essential to making things happen.
Another branch of incredible support has been Anne Hubben, of rubycreatives.com. Not only has she given me practical advice like using tumblr for a microblog, and developing an essential work philosophy; but she has a genuine, compassionate interest in my transition from a corporate employee to an artist. Her guidance is light and subtle, but I always feel like I can conquer the world after I speak with her. Tellingly, when I accomplish something like finding a literary agent or getting this show, I’ve been specifically working with her—when we had a break, I was in a strange place of ineffectual momentum.
One week into my two week deadline before the opening, I realized that I needed to start framing the artwork, pronto. Ech. I had bought the frames and mats pre-cut, but I had to assemble everything myself. Not difficult per say, just many many steps repeated 22 times. I had ordered the frames months ago in anticipation of showing on the Cape in November and had a grand plan about portioning out the framing in a leisurely way. Ha! To follow: detailed analysis of the framing process.
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