My how the time does fly. Today was the day I have both been looking forward to for a year and also the one I have had increasing butterflies about. Yes the day I started to put the show , if not on the walls, at least leant against them.
The main cause of my worry has not been so much the content, as I am pretty confident that it hangs together well, but more to do with getting my large 3 metre long prints onto the walls both straight and unmarked. This particular little niggle has been something I have pondered for quite some time. Eventually I decided to go with the ‘put the batons on the wall, put the velcro on the batons and then push the foamex mounted prints onto the velcro’ solution. This seems like a reasonable plan, except for the fact that, having moved these things around the gallery today, they are quite bendy – and you only get one go at putting them straight onto the wall without it becomes a matter of damage limitation. Perhaps I’m just a wuss in this respect, as I am reliably informed by James the arts officer, that all will be well when the various ‘people who know about these things’ get their heads and hands around this tomorrow.
As fate has a way of doing, timings have conspired to mean that my opening is on Friday at 6pm whilst my daughters graduation is at 10.30am on the same day. Not too bad except that she studied in London so I have 300 miles or so between events. All do-able of course, it just means I can’t be at the gallery as the art goes on the wall. Ah well… maybe that is for the best. They have my mobile number!
Very much looking forward to the opening night though – and the big sigh of relief afterwards.
Today, as I put all the bits n pieces against the walls – and looked at the video (well one of the projections as the other player wasn’t working eeek..) … I got a nice feeling.. that feeling you get when you see something take place that has been forming in your minds eye for a long time… and then there it is… a real thing… a reassurance that all the long hours and fine tuning were worth it. And the other thing that always happens (and this is particularly relevant to the Gestalt show)… that the reality of the show is like a live beast… it begins to breath and is already talking and saying stuff that I hoped it would, but didn’t dare anticipate until it had it’s own reality.
Goodness… birth pain with just a muffled inner scream…
