It's Up!

Our exhibit is up! We visited the Clay Center this morning to hang our exhibit. All the pieces were laid out on mats on the floor along the walls according to the layout in our model. Denise, the assistant curator, gave us a quick lecture about the math equation used to decide how high to hang each painting, and allowed a few lucky volunteers to put on white gloves and hang some pieces. Bridgett -- one of the Creative Services team members -- showed us how to hang the baseline tags beside the paintings, and also the reflections we had written about our favorite paintings.

The most exciting part was probably the installation of the vinyl title on the wall. When the backing was pulled away to reveal the title, we all cheered and took photos with our cell phones. (Yes, Mrs. Fitz, we know cellphones aren't allowed in class, but this is a special occasion, right?)

The exhibit opens to the public this weekend. We are all so excited to hear what everyone has to say about it. Will people understand our theme through the artworks we chose? Will people agree with our portrayal of life in West Virginia? Will they enjoy the show? Who knows?

Oops...

One of the challenges we faced when building our model was that things aren't always the way they look on a map. The Clay Center gave us a great map with lots of measurements that we could use to figure out our space in miniature, but we realized during our last visit that what we thought was a wall was actually a series of columns. We also realized that another wall was actually a moveable wall with a space in the middle, so we had to change our layout. So, we took a deep breath, grabbed the X-acto knives, rulers, calculators, and tape, and tore down half of our model so we could re-build the parts that were off. This cut our wall space considerably, so we had to make the tough decision to cut some of the art from our exhibit. There were a few pieces that didn't fit the theme as strongly as others, so the pieces we cut were not too difficult to choose, but it is still sad to take out some pieces of which we've grown to love during this project.

As difficult as it was to tear apart our model, we learned a valuable lesson -- whenever you are creating something, there is a strong liklihood that you will have to make huge edits, or even trash your project and start over, and that's all part of the creative process. Nobody likes to do it, and it would be nice to get everything right on the first try, but that almost never happens. It's good to start over. In this case, we like the layout much better the second time around.

Graphics

Last week, we visited the Clay Center's in-house creative services (graphic design) studio to see how the exhibit graphics are made. It was interesting to see how real graphic designers work, and to see some of the projects they're working on. We got a sneak peek at some new logo work, and enjoyed meeting Bridgett and Lauren, the Clay Center's designers.

After that, we revisited the space to see how our accurate our model is. We found a few mistakes, but for the most part, our model is pretty correct. We will have to cut some art from our exhibit, which will be hard to do, because we love all the pieces we've selected. This is the sad part of putting together any art exhibit -- there is never enough wall space!

We are ahead of schedule, which is always a good thing. Now comes the tedious stuff, like finalizing all the text for the exhibit, deciding which pieces we may have to cut, and waiting to hang the exhibit in a few weeks.

Our Exhibit, in Miniature

Our exhibit is ready -- at least in miniature. After rearranging and rearranging, we can now see what our exhibit will look like with our scale model of the gallery.

Just for fun, someone placed a miniature Vincent Van Gogh action figure in the model so he can admire our exhibit. It looks like he's having a good time!

Tiny Paintings

Our model is built, and all the paintings have been printed out in scale. We are "hanging" our miniature exhibit to see if all the art will fit. The most difficult part right now is figuring out what goes together, and what doesn't. Artwork that worked together in our minds doesn't always look so great together when you see how their sizes relate to one another, but new relationships between artworks start to emerge, too.

This week, we hope to get our miniature exhibit completed, and we will also visit the Clay Center once more to see how the exhibit graphics will be made. We will also be finishing the exhibit text panels and labels, which will give information about the exhibit, and about the individual works of art.

Model-Making 101

There is a lot of math in this project. Who knew? In order to plan our exhibit and make sure all the art fits on the wall in an attractive way, we have to plan out the space, down to the last inch. In order to do this, we are building a scale model of the Clay Center's upstairs gallery, and "installing" scale models of each painting on the walls to see what our exhibit will look like and to ensure that it all fits together nicely. The Clay Center graphics department generously donated some foamcore to build our model with, and we also picked up a nice floor plan, complete with measurements of all the walls, when we visited last Friday. Now, we are reducing those measurements to create a model that is perfectly to-scale, so we can see what our exhibit will look like before we actually hang the art in the gallery.

It's a good thing we all paid attention in math class. Who knew we would be using those skills outside of the math classroom? I think, secretly, we all knew. Math is everywhere. Even in art!

Group Portrait in Front of the New Sculpture at the Clay Center