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.
