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

Visit to the Archives and Gallery

Today, we visited the Clay Center to see the gallery space and discuss how exhibits are planned out. There is a LOT of work that goes into putting together an exhibit, and picking out the images is only part of it. We met up with our Clay Center counterparts, Denise, Lewis, and Kayte to find out how pieces in exhibits are grouped together, and how much space we have to work with. Do you know there is an actual mathematical equation that is used to hang artworks in exactly the right place? Neither did we!

We got a huge surprise when Denise invited us into the vault to see some of the artworks that we have chosen for our exhibit up-close. We were expecting her to have one or two pieces out in the gallery for use to see in person, but we actually got to go into the vault and look at the majority of the pieces we've selected. It was amazing to see all the art just packed away in this vault. The collection is HUGE and the technology involved with storing and protecting the artwork is impressive!

Looking at the artworks that we had seen only in small .jpgs on the Clay Center's website changed a lot of things. Seeing all the details of the artworks, from brushstrokes to the artist's eraser marks made the pieces so much more interesting. Some pieces that we had overlooked suddenly became favorites that we want included in the show. And other pieces that we liked at first seemed less fitting for our exhibit theme. It just goes to show that art is meant to be enjoyed in person, and there really is no substitute for seeing it in person.

After visiting the archives, we planned our next steps. We will build a scale model of the gallery, right down to scale prints of the artworks we want to include, and we will plan out our exhibit. We will also write labels for some of the works, create tags for the individual artworks, discuss lighting options, publicize the exhibit... wow, we've got a lot of work to do! We are grateful to Denise, Lewis, and Kayte for all their help, and for giving us an opportunity to see an art exhibit from the curator or gallery's point of view!

Wildly Wonderful and Wonderfully Wild

We have a theme! Our theme is "Wildly Wonderful and Wonderfully Wild." We are currently working to select artwork for the exhibit from the vast archives at the Clay Center. This is proving to be more difficult than we expected, with so many great works of art to choose from. In the process, we are learning about great artists with connections to West Virginia, such as Lee Savage, Jim Gibson, Anne Shreve, Julius deGruyter, and many, many more. Our goal is to select 50 pieces, but it is so hard to narrow it down.