Thursday, April 3, 2008

Opening Night!



Mail Art shows are like kids, I've discovered. They start out small & you can carry them with you in a single tote bag; next thing you know it takes an hour just to get the art safely strapped down into your car and off to the gallery where it takes several more hours to get it ready for public viewing. You find yourself saying things like, "oh no the sailboats fell off the volcano!" and other statistically improbable phrases. The gremlins were back--or something--since Jeanne caused the track lighting to go out while she was trying to hang the cube submitted by Billy Kinsey in the vicinity of the track lighting. So when my graduate students stopped by this afternoon to see if they could help with the installation (and yes, Jessie, that was your triceratops lego sculpture you heard falling to pieces as I left the mailroom today and ya'll were in aesthetics class...). I said, well, we do need help but I don't know if you can help us--unless you have, like some lamps or lighting fixtures we can use? And maybe some nails? We decided to hang some framed pieces in parts of the center after all; but I hadn't brought any nails. (I know, to hang an art show; did I mention I've never done this before?) But, and here's where the story gets good, it turns out that my graduate students rock because in their offices they had both (A) a pouch chock full of nails of many sizes and (B) a multi-bulb floor lamp of many colors that totally looks, well goofy, but in a good way. And that was just the first of several serendipitous moments of a memorable evening. For maximum effect, you should scroll down to the FAQ see what the gallery looked like before we installed our exhibit and then, compare it to the afters in this post. I'll be post more and better pictures soon. For now, dear contributors, you can play "find my art" with these uncredited action shots from the opening.

1 comment:

Dinah said...

Congratulations on a fabulous opening!! I can't wait to see more pictures!