Packing Art

Making up for lost time. We'd have been even faster, but we improved on all the packing for items sent here for this show. We roll the canvas banners on archival tubes, we alter some of our shipping crates for the Carter paintings. All museums do this, you can always take a crate that's too large and fill the extra space with ethafoam blocks. We pack the two Cleveland Museum paintings in their over-kill crates; one weighs 180 pounds for a painting that weighs 28, the other weighs 220 pounds for a painting that weighs 42. These could survive any accident up to train. I have to make a few pit-stops, but we work hard all day, sore feet and legs from the ceramic-tile-over-concrete floor. I actually sit and rest a couple of times, which I rarely do. Thinking about a bench, for the driveway walk, there's a place halfway where there's room enough. I could keep a foam pad on a shelf underneath. I quickly design a Universal Driveway Bench in my head, think about the construction. From a recent dumpster, I have some offcuts of treated stock. 8x8 legs, with a 2x8 shoe on the bottom of each, to spread the footprint. The actual seat could be anything, a beam offcut, a plank from the river, a flat rock; cross-brace the legs in some clever way, using bolts, I think, because I could loosen and tighten them, infinite adjustment. I think you would expect Infinite Adjustment with a Universal Driveway Bench. Reading about the high Arctic, as I always do this time of year, I wonder how I might accomplish the bench with caribou antlers and walrus rawhide. If the seat even needed to be secured, I'd do it from underneath, so there wasn't a hole that could fill with ice. As I think about this, I see there are several models, even within the field of Universal Driveway Benches. There's the clinker-built model, that works fine, but you have to physically make adjustments. There's another model that uses the Mar's Rover technology and it costs a lot more. I could make a few calls, but I guessing $250 million, for, really, a top of the line bench; or I could build one for nothing, which would serve equally well. It was great getting out today, I needed some contact, and solving these puzzles of packing with two bright guys is a fucking treat. One more cold night, then balmy. I consider my wardrobe. I need to get to the laundromat. I start considering a raid for water and dry socks. Take a few scalps, the legend grows. It's all bullshit. I was ever looking for a safe place to sleep, denning up with whatever fat I could muster, curling into a fetal position, and sleeping for a couple of months. I certainly wasn't trying to make a point. The most sensual thing that happens for me, is I slip into my down bag, under a down comforter, and I'm warm, and don't care if the rest of the world freezes.