Hanging “Anointing the Goddess”

Diane got to the farm at  8:30 hoping to beat the heat, it was cool for a while, but not for long.  We  placed all the art around the gallery and stared at it.  There’s so much we both said, where do we begin?  Now I remember that the same thing happened  at the last show.

This seems to be the way it goes, I stand there gawking at the work, my mouth hanging open and Diane gets moving.  She starts picking up pictures  0rganizing them into catagories.  It’s not a logical process, there’s no formular to getting it done.  Once I see Diane  going, I join in.  We both begin organizing them  by color, or subject matter or shape and size.  We work together well because we share an aesthetic (although I couldn’t begin to explain what it is)  and we move quickly, not agonizing.   We cull the pieces that don’t fit into a catagory, making a pile near the door.

When we hang the first picture, it starts to flow. When one of us is unsure about something the other one is sure, we don’t debate it, we trust it.   The first picture is a starting point and we move out from there one wall at a time.   We decide height and spacing and how straight the piece is by eye, we don’t even think to bring a tape measure or level. Diane places the picture and I hammer the hook into the wall.  It’s an organic process and when we’re done we look at it and don’t know how it happened.  We see similarities in pictures hanging next to each other that we weren’t consciously aware of.  By now our brains are fuzzy and we know we have become useless.  Time to stop.  I’ll  make small adjustments and finish up the details tomorrow.

For more details about the show go HERE.