Arranging

The way you start a day like this, you walk around a bunch of times and look at all the pieces, then you start grouping things in the bays of the gallery, then you start moving things to other places. Very confusing at first, then a sort of order emerges, one of many possible orders because the relationships between pieces isn't cast in concrete, but there are thematic groupings, and color groupings. Perhaps because we read left to right, most people go through the gallery left to right and that affects placement. Our friend Sharee, who oversees art education for the county high schools, drops by, and spends a couple of hours watching and making comments. Installing a show is inherently interesting, all the unknowns converging, and requires complete attention. By the end of the day (4 o'clock) we are mental and physical wrecks. We have a tentative placement, I convince D that we must stop, come back with fresh eyes later, that James and I can paint and clean on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we can actually install, I say this because only a dozen or so pieces hang, everything else is 3-D and merely sits on a flat surface, an easy show to finalize. Having worked with Sara for years, I know D will fret and dream and rearrange everything in his mind, and we'll change a few things, but if the weather cooperates, which it is not expected to do, we'll be fine. It's going to be a lovely show: when we light it. Wednesday afternoon, it will fairly pop. I love the 3-D shows, but the downside is that the light is off the walls and on the floor, every pedestal we own is in play, and the floor is in terrible shape. I'll need to clean it, because no one else can or will, except D, and he's an executive now, wears fancy pants and a sports coat. Homage to Sara, we both, independently, had internally dialoged building a conglomeration of platforms and pedestals, with the various risers and boxes, in the middle of the gallery, which we would have done, thereby solving a lot of placement problems, but there are a raft of functions, upcoming, connected to the exhibit, and we had to keep the central area open for dancing. I love this stuff, it turns my crank, you know? I'm fully engaged. The way the elements come together. Compounds. First thing you know you're building things, or imagining things, or hearing things, or seeing things, or smelling things that make you remember. I had every intention of coming in the door, when I arrived back home, at the end of this day, of nuking left-overs and writing. I didn't even nuke the left-overs, turned on the computer, sat there like an idiot, staring into the middle distance for a long time, a mindless half-hour, started and stoked a fire, but essentially mindless, and my only goal was to post. By normal standards it's awful outside, but being only nearly normal, it doesn't bother me so much; it's inconvenient, slogging through deep snow with a heavy pack, but on the other hand, no one questions my resolve.