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
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