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.

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.

Howdy, Neighbor!

Today, we got a visit from our Clay Center counterparts Lewis Ferguson (Director of Art and Science education), Denise Deegan (Collections Manager/ Assistant Curator) and Kayte Brannon (lead educator.) We really enjoyed the visit! They gave us an overview of the project and we shared with them some of the possible themes we've come up with so far.

To come up with themes, we all went online to the Avampato Online Gallery and created our own, personal "galleries" using the "My Gallery" feature. We then e-mailed these to Mrs. Burch so she could see which paintings we chose. Then, she asked us to revisit our choices and try to find adjectives that described our collection as a whole. We will use these adjectives to come up with ideas for themes for our group exhibit.

Some of the theme ideas so far are:

People at Work
the Suburbs
Four Seasons
Shadows
Shapes
Charleston Art
American Dream... or not
People in Color
Warm Colors/Cool Colors
Melancholy
Tranquility
Ethnic Art
City/Country

A lot of people noticed that their galleries showed contrasts between two things, like "City/Country" or "Warm and Cool Colors." We like contrast!