eight

It's eight o'clock now, and eight has been a constant number in the last 24 hours. Yesterday was the big install day. I arrived early at the gallery, before or around 8:30 am, and waited patiently for security to arrive and open the gallery door for me. This guy showed up, a tall guy with a huge gun on his belt holster, wearing a polo shirt and jeans, and asked me if I wanted to be let in (even though he was not the guy I called). I said sure and thanked him, being extremely intimidated by his gun, even though he was very nice and friendly. Now that I think of it, it makes me think of all the discussions on students carrying concealed weapons on college campus, even though the guy did not appear to be a student (it is an all-women's college), nor was it concealed. Guns freak me out.

The muses had not clarified to me where the works should go, but I knew that one piece had to be in one wall, the big monster METROPOLIS drawing wall with the MEDIATOR projection over it. I made the projection a large size, measured it to make sure it would fit the drawings, connected the DVD player (it did not work, had to hunt down for another one), and measured to make sure the projection was somewhat centered in the wall, and then I measured the center of the projection to begin hanging the work. I made the center of the piece 60 inches, but if I were to do all over again, I'd do it at 58", because the gallery walls seem somewhat short, or the ceiling gives the impression of hanging low. It took forever to do this, about 2 hours. The beautiful pushpins were actually not very good, but cheap (plastic that looked like metal), so I could not use the hammer, and had to push them (a total of 40) by hand. My fingertips are still sore, and I think it is affecting the way I use the touch-screen of my phone.

Once that was done, I hung the first triptych, one out of eight I had to do (that number again). I also hung it at 60 inches center, and also thought I should lower it, but it was such a pain to hang it and let it be leveled-looking (the canvases are rectangular but unfortunately very precise or square, so when put together with the 3 inch spaces, it always looks off). Once I adjusted the lighting (nice system, but too bright and too close to the walls, in my opinion), the piece looked better.

The TVs had not been installed the night before, and neither had the patching and spot-painting been done. What I thought was a curse turned out to be an advantage, because I decided to change where the TVs were place, and put it in the smaller wall, along with my name and artist statement, and the piece LLAVE, a small (22"x 30") silverpoint drawing that sort of unlocks the whole exhibition, as it provides some help with all the codes being on display. Codes and the color silver make up the two major components of this exhibition, which I titled "Argentum". This new arrangement would also be good for people coming into the building from the main entrance, as they'd turn around and immediately see my name and the video diptych. The big wall that connects the two rooms in the gallery were to hold the widest, horizontal-most pieces, four of them total. The wall opposite the title/TV wall would hold three triptychs, vertically oriented.

Earlier in the morning I got an email from Tiffany, and sometime early in the afternoon she came to campus and brought me my Starbucks trifecta o' fake (decaf+nonfat+splenda), which was a lovely thing for her to do. She then told me the student would be coming sometime after 1 pm and could stay until 3, which was great. By the time the student arrived (a very nice young lady studying sculpture, forget her name), I was almost done drilling the holes for the three triptych wall. One piece turned out to be extra challenging because the drywall screw just refused to go into place. After butchering the gallery wall I ended up using a nail to hold it in place; I hope it stays up for as long as it needs to stay, a whole month. It is actually one of my favorite pieces, PAREJA, and it includes two monkey skulls in it, which, positioned as it is, now face or look toward the large scale sculpture of a skull seen through the glass doors in the adjacent Moreau Gallery (at least the large skull does). What a nice coincidence. After explaining to the student what I wanted to have done with the TVs (two lovely Toshibas with built-in DVD players, maybe 20 inches wide each), and finishing the vertical triptych wall, I began the final task of installing the large wall o' paintings.

There are two things I always do when I install a show. The first one is that I always install barefooted, with socks on, no shoes. The other thing is that I usually position my ruler so that the number five or seven or twelve is always at the center. This install was different. I kept my shoes on the whole time (a testament that my TOMS feel just like being barefooted), and for some reason I kept the number 8 at the center of my measurements. I still have no idea why I did so, but now I feel I want to look up the number in numerology...
Quickly reading up on it on numerology.com, it seems that the number 8 is a number of power and career, as well as a number of balance. I like the notion of balance in terms of this exhibition and trip.

http://www.numerology.com/numerology-numbers/8

I took my time measuring and drawing up a chart for the big wall, which would hold a total of twelve canvases arranged as four triptychs. I drew and measured, and did the math proof to make sure I did not mis-measured anything (found one mistake, corrected it), and began drawing the drill points. this time centering the pieces at 58 inches (which I had also done for the vertical wall, the TVs and the drawing). By the the student had finished installing the TV, and we put the DVDs in and made the appropriate setting changes. It looked good. Tiffany walked in and stayed there watching the piece. I told her that the final version of that piece would contain eight monitors in a long strip of flatscreen TV monitors, six of which are already done and two are in my head. I am not sure where I will be showing that yet though.

Tiffany told me she'd be leaving for Detroit for the MACAA conference in a few, so I had to get going, and finish installing the work. I was beat by then and worried I'd not finish in time. I finished drawing the screw points, and began drilling, this time had no problems, with the exception of one place, which for some reason showed as if it was 1 inch off when the painting was hung. That took for ever to adjust, but eventually all paintings went up and they looked pretty good. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands (in a women's college, the men's bathroom is extremely small and clean), and came back to install the drawing. I originally wanted to have it framed, but I ran out of time and money, so it was hung with magnets, and hanging it went pretty fast.

The final steps were to fix the lighting, which in this case consisted of removing tons of unneeded spotlights, and aiming them properly, most of the time lowering their angle. Once that was done I cleaned up the room, collected the garbage and placed all the ladders and carts in the gallery storage room. I actually finished before Tiffany left, and was in the hotel by 5 pm. I was exhausted, so I laid in bed for a bit recollecting my thoughts and deciding what to do for food. I had no food the whole day, with the exception of a humongous breakfast, a power bar for lunch, and an apple and banana in the afternoon. I was too tired to drive anywhere. After talking to a friend on the phone I decided to order room service (they did have it after all), and even though the steak sounded great, I decided to go for a cup of corn chowder, a grilled chicken salad, and a chocolate ganache napoleon for dessert. The rest of the night was spent aimlessly, and I went to bed later than I wanted to (past 11 pm).

I already ate breakfast and now I need to pack and leave this town. I am getting sleepy now, but hope the 3.5 hours trip goes fast. I wanna take a nap before installing D-lectricity tonight.





- posted via iPad

Location:U S 31 N - The Inn At St Mary's,Notre Dame, IN, United States

do you have pushpins?

Here I am on the road again. Last weekend I went to Grand Rapids for Art Prize for a few hours, to document my piece for Adoration, and even though I stayed overnight, I left in such a hurry in the morning that no blogging took place.

Today I find myself in a hotel filled with business types and once-jocks, the constituency of this region (I am very close to Notre Dame University). The key of staying in these types of hotel and avoid the crowd is to always eat the free breakfast later, around 9 am, right before they close it. It is still not even 7:30 am, so here I am blogging. But this will be quick, as I have a million things to do and achieve today, and I am anxious to get going (so I might have to eat with aforementioned once-jocks).

Yesterday, after a morning filled with errands (bank, AIDS Walk office check drop off, Utrecht Art Supply shopping for D-lectricity, Starbucks fake trifecta run, and studio and car packing), I found myself and my trusty Fiona heading out of town, destination: Indiana. This is the second time I come here in 6 months, the last time being on my way to a Chicago/Columbia College trip, where I stopped by to see the gallery in the flesh, so to speak. I am here to install a solo exhibition, consisting of large-scale paintings (large to me), drawings, and videos. Somehow the whole show fit in my car, with the passengers seats folded down. Every time I think about getting a new car, specially now that I need a new set of tires and do the 40 K revision (about $200) I ask myself "can the Prius fit the same amount of crap in the back?". Maybe the answer is yes, but I have yet to go to the dealership and ask them.

The trip was uneventful, though slightly boring, and I was oh so sleepy, which is unusual. I left my studio at 12:16, and arrived at the hotel at 3:42, not bad, if you include a pit stop to the bathroom and caffeine purchase. I think everyone feels that way, but as I drove through Indiana (where I stopped, though did not get gas, too expensive), I had in my mind "I'm so glad I live in Michigan and not here", though I suspect a lot of people say they are glad they live wherever besides Michigan. Is this when you realize a place is actually home?

The place the Art department booked me in (I am showing at the Hammes Gallery, part of the Moreau Galleries complex on the campus of St. Mary's College, an all-girl religious institution - already had a nun encounter, survived despite creepy doll one of them held). The hotel is your usual affair, but fortunately they also have Aveda products. As I approach my 39th birthday I realize I've become shamelessly like my father, and this morning I found myself emptying a bottle of shampoo into one I brought with me, so that I get it refilled this morning during room service and have more to take home (all this for the sake of saving money, even after the $150 three haircut incident last month). I emailed Tiffany, the gallery director, and she called me right back explaining where to go to meet her on campus.

The campus is small but lovely, though I did manage to get lost a few times already and ended up by this beautiful but very Catholic cemetery. I finally made it to the gallery and met Tiffany, a very nice lady (I believe she is new here, and this is her first year doing the gallery - she's an Art Historian). I immediately got a good vibe from her. The gallery looked larger and nicer than I remember, the floors that natural 60s terrazzo polished look, white walls with black ceiling without tiles (very institutional), but with great frameless glass doors that add a touch of elegance to the place. My gallery is right in front of a larger one, where works by two artists are on display (that I found extremely interesting, too bad they already installed and I did not get a chance to meet them). After showing me the loading dock and how to get there, I drove the car around and with a dolly and three trips in the elevator, I brought all the stuff to the gallery. I immediately laid stuff out.

Tiffany brought in the flat screen monitors and the projector I will be using, and told me student workers would patch paint the wall and install the TVs sometime at night. Thirty minutes out of Detroit-metro I realized I forgot to bring metal pushpins to install the drawing mural, so I asked her where I could get some (she told me the name of a town nearby). I laid out the show a few different times, and I am still not sure about its flow. Today I hope that, with fresher eyes, it will all come to me. I am not sure how much or how little help I will get today in installing. I was under the impression that the students would hang everything, but now it sounds like I will be doing all the work, and they will come by to help between classes. I have the whole day today, so it should be doable.

Much like right now, by 6:30 I was tired, hungry, and with a shopping list, so I made it back to the hotel and found where the stores were, and headed that way, first to Home Depot (to get dry wall nails and extension chords), and then to find metal pushpins. As I drove towards their mall hell, I realized that food was going to be an issue, as I only saw chain restaurants everywhere. The hotel does not seem to have room service either. I was thinking about Chipotle, because I accidentally ate there on my trip to Wittenberg (a year ago, to install another solo show in another religious university with a gallery in the midwest, my apparent target audience), so Chipotle was on my mind. But all I could see was Shake n' Bake (is that what it is called), McDees and Chick-Fill-A (no fucking way), so I got the stuff at the hardware store, they did not have pushpins, and headed back to Hobby Lobby, which was a total mistake, because that place literally makes me feel sick. The staff was unmotivated and the store confusing, I almost passed out at one point, and when I finally found the area, they did not have what I wanted. I drove to Office Max, and they did not have it, but told me about Office Depot, which was right next to Home Depot. I wanted to scream, but decided to walk over to JoAnne's Fabrics first, just in case. You know the answer to my question there: no. After screaming out loud for the first time ever "Jesus Fucking Christ" and immediately fearing being crucified (I for once felt foreigner again), I got back in my car and headed to Office Depot. As I said I little prayer to myself, "god, there must be a reason why I am driving back here", I looked over my shoulder and saw a Chipotle restaurant. I ran into Office Depot, they had beautiful metal pushpins, and then crossed over to Chipotle and order me a bowl to go. By the time I got to the hotel it was closer to 8:30 pm, so I ate in my room, and turned on the TV. Flashdance was showing, edited of course, and I felt nice and warm inside, thinking about my time living in Maine, when all we had in Winter months was Flashdance and The Sound of Music to entertain ourselves. I almost cried in a couple places, and like the main character, realized that life without dreams, and life without pursuing dreams, is not worth living.

Wish me good luck today ;-)





- posted via iPad

Location:U S 31 N - The Inn At St Mary's, Notre Dame,IN, United States