I’d promised myself I’d write in this space more often… but since what I’ve been doing instead is MAKING THE WORK, I’m not going to be too hard on myself.
Here we are, 11 weeks away from starting to install the show. I have a few final details to finish on two of the white felted Hanging Pods, and then I can dedicate more studio time to stitching up some more industrial felt Holdables. In the meantime I needed to take some photos for postcard announcements. In case you missed it, that means I needed photos of the exhibition before the exhibition was actually in place in the museum. What to do, you ask? Cropping and Photoshop and the hallway outside my studio provided the answers.
I spent several very long evenings suspending Hanging Pods from the rafters to mimic their spacing and lighting as it will be in the museum; I had to take the photos at night to have darkness in order to control the light. Happily I am quite comfortable scrambling up and down ladders, as that was a necessary part of adjusting art and light. And again I’m glad my sculpture isn’t terribly heavy. Once I had the pieces configured so that they’d work well in the viewfinder of the camera with good lighting it was time for my models. Since this artwork is all about visitors interacting I had to recruit my usual laborers: my husband, kids, and myself. Note: ice cream can be a good form of payment. I took a ton of photos so I’d have a few to ultimately choose from. A week later I did the same with the stitched industrial felt Holdables. For some of the finished photos I layered multiple images of myself with the sculpture to give a sense of how audiences may interact, since I’m clearly a chicken about asking other (non-related) humans to help me at weird hours. Those Photoshop skills really helped.
Below I present a comparison to show how my original concept drawings have finally come to life!
