Day Eleven - She Made Her Mark

I received a lovely pack of snap shots in the mail. Yes, they clearly match the space I have mocked up. Whew ! That is a relief. The exhibition She Made Her Mark is going to be memorable. I can now see each piece in it's place in my mind's eye.

She Made Her Mark will open on Sunday, March 4, 2007. The reception will be by invitation only. The exhibition for the general public will open on the sixth. Last day will be June 30, 2007. Check the website; there is a treasure trove of information behind the index listings.

The Marie Webster House has been lovingly restored and is far from the childhood image in my mind. I used to pass it on my way to school. Next door was a drive in and soda fountain that had tin roof sundaes. Just south of that was the railroad station, Railway Express, the Broadway Limited; the door to the universe.

The selections for The Quilters' Hall of Fame are visually complete. The administrative work has not been done. The form letter and database need work. Selected artists should receive their emails no later than Monday, February 5, 2007.

Artists who have works selected for the greater Los Angeles basin exhibitions may lag just slightly behind this. Shipping instructions will follow in a separate bulk email. Please make sure my thelmasmith@thelmasmith.com email address is in your address book. You don't want your notification languishing in a spam blocker.

This has been one of the most exciting months of my life. It is also the most heartbreaking. You have a certain number of wall spaces. There are four or five equally good choices for each space. Quality has not been an issue. What has been the most difficult is understanding the flow of a residential space. It was restored with white walls and lovely carpets. It is good, professionally lit, display space. It is not one huge gallery room.

I have lived my life by the rule of the continuous right turn. No sooner had I said that publicly than Robert Genn published his thoughts on Gallery Flow. I felt a bit foolish. I read what he said carefully. I tried to put my past experiences with different sorts of spaces, my thoughts on flow, his thoughts on flow, the images in hand, into some sort of pleasing equation.

I know I have gotten it right. The selection became not a question of what was best; almost all were "best." The selection came in response to the space itself. People will laugh if I say the house told me to do this. So laugh. The snapshots confirm my intuitive process.

Sarah Ann asked about the mock ups. They are not actual architectural models; just a rough spatial 3D. I would be ashamed to have them exhibited. They are very rube goldberg in structure.

However, once the acceptances have gone out to the artists I will photo document the stack with the scaled images in place. I'll get pictures from every angle. Sadly, the doors and windows are in light pencil. They are not cut in. I did not think the mock up would hold together if I cut out the broad pocket doors. The broad bay windows to the north both upstairs and down were not mocked up. Maybe I'll take a felt tip so you can see more, to better understand the photos. However, it's almost impossible to get a straight edge into these rooms once they become 3D.

The cats are quite fond on the grand parlor. Don't know what they would have done had I opened the pocket doors, built the staircase instead of just the landing, put in floors upstairs. So far they have made no deals with the golden retriever on TV who is trying to sell recipes.

An aside here, eleven days hardly make up most of January. My life right now is quite complex. I've lots of medical trips for my husband. So, even though I touch on this work daily, some days it's a snoop at two in the morning to reconfirm that I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing.

Day Ten - She Made Her Mark

I know it seems as though I've been absent without leave. Actually I've been present, accounted for, and absolutely horizontal due to some sort of virus that produced the filthiest sinus headache I can remember in some decades.

The image of a jig saw puzzle of a Victorian house I once owned in Port Townsend, Washington, will be more interesting that a haphazard pile of foam core board. When I was young and foolish I ran a construction company that specialized in the restoration of Victorian and Edwardian era residential buildings. So when Anne Copeland of FiberArts Connection of Southern California took me up on my word about curating an exhibition I thought I know all about old buildings.

Ah, hubris, I thought that less than favorable aspect of my personality had gone the way of all my dark brown hair. Mock-up, sure, not a problem; um, . . . the walls in my stair well are not plumb. The downstairs has no ceiling. The two rooms I've been assigned upstairs have no floors. I thank the universe every day that I had enough sense to mock this up in scale.

There is no way I could have gotten the rhythm, balance, cadence of this exhibition without being able to see it in miniature in the round. It has truly been an exercise in humility. I think there is a possibility I am done. I don't really know. I need to look at this again, and again, and again. I look in from the vantage of the front window downstairs. I look in the rooms upstairs like a parakeet. Mighty pudgy parakeet.

Even if this still looks right on Wednesday there is still a lot of work to do. I have to annotate the data base. I have to notify each artist. I have to work my way through the first round of declined works because every one of them is worthy of being in the master exhibition. I still have to pull two small, concise exhibitions that will be specifically for the greater Los Angeles basin.

I have about five and a half hours in today. I've completely lost count of the total woman hours to date. Maybe someone who has been paying attention can post a tally as a comment.

I'll be back at it again tomorrow.

Day Nine - She Made Her Mark

Day Nine has been a day of expletives deleted. I' ve spent more than five hours. The image is intentionally boring as I've shown you the outside of the reception room on the ironing board.

The grand parlor is on a lower table in the front. It appears from my antique architectural training that the grand parlor could originally have been the parlor to the front of the house and the dining room towards the back. It seems from the two fireplaces, placed differently, that there is a wall that is long gone.

I need to add the back (staircase) wall to the reception area and the hallway wall leading to what had been the kitchen a hundred years ago. Some of the few really spacious walls in the downstairs.

Upstairs are four separate galleries. There is a very wide hall with good, expansive walls. I am looking forward to seeing how the space works in three dimensions. It is very frustrating work.

Two rooms, five hours, and I have tentative placed eleven works. There are about a dozen pinned to the ironing board; you can barely see them to the right. This reminds me of moving into the house I am living in. I moved furniture for a full three years before the energy patterns felt right and the space looked as comfortable as I wanted it to be. Not only that. I sat down last evening and promptly got up and moved two well framed posters. Gheesh.

Day Ten, off to making four rooms and a hall way with nine foot ceilings.

Day Eight - She Made Her Mark

Aurora Horribilis, © Nancy Erickson.

Well, I think the phrase is "hoist on her own petard." My living room is twenty two feet long but due to cabinetry I can't get more than nineteen feet focal length. I was in a big hurry this morning. Cold, grey, bleak, shooting in ambient light, I thought I had this image famed properly. It's easier to fudge as it is not rectangular. Notice the tell tale of the line between the wall and the ceiling. I screwed it up.

This is the exact same image dropped into photoshop and custom rotated 1º right. See how it is not even with the text. If I had cropped out the ceiling line I could have gotten away with this one. Yes, the bottom is uneven; it is built that way.

This is the first one I took from about twenty five feet back and maybe ten feet to the left. Are you beginnng to see how important it is that your camera and the work are square with each other?

This one was taken from about ten feet back and maybe twelve feet to the left. See the keystoning that is looking like visual perspective?

All this to show you that good photography is not easy. If you do not own a tripod, the least expensive is about $30 retail. Look for the levels. There should be a leveling bubble on the tripod body. There should be another leveling bubble on the head that actually holds the camera. Use them; they are there for good reason.

One of the problems a tripod solves when it comes to keystoning is the winder that makes the camera higher. I am the shortest person. Without a tripod I am looking up at everything. There is no way I can get a square image without standing on a ladder. Frankly, $30 is the cheapest emergency room insurance for me.

Learn to use your tripod and your camera. I am very fortunate that the Spider tutors me. It's an ongoing process. I'm honored to have his help.

However, for exhibitions that require slides there is no way, no matter how good the tutor, that I can replicate Jack Kulawik's studio. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and decades of photographing art put Jack in a class by himself. He regularly puts my slides in the accepted column in national exhibitions.

I don't have the time or the fuel to take a photography class at the local community college. It may be an option for you. However, don't fool yourself into thinking that the best digital camera can replace a professional. I proved it myself this morning.

So here I sit, with my head stuck up like a turtle looking through my trifocals. I've worked seven hours today. Four hours of that is PhotoShop time. The other three hours is in photography, color printing, and computer and phone communications. All these things take time. I am waiting on two images.

Tomorrow I begin the mock-ups in earnest. I've avoided them as long as I can. However, working with the images, sizing, going through things again and again, I'm beginning to get the names, the works, and the sizes comfortable in my brain. Without that nothing happens.

Day Seven - She Made Her Mark

Good Sunday Afternoon,

It's cold, raining, and the wind is blowing here in Sonora. I closed the blinds that look out on the garden to cut the heat loss. Beware, I'm on a rant.

I'm very frustrated today. I am in the process of reducing every image submitted to She Made Her Mark to the scale of one inch equals one foot.

I have provided one of my own very crappy keystoned images rather than disclose any images from SMHM. I have spent about two hours working on the first third of the image deck. The bad news is that photoshop work gets priced out at $35 per hour.

I've been closely cropping and sizing images. Many too many of the images are keystoned. I could use photoshop to correct all the keystoning as represented by the sample. That process distorts the image; it is an improper way to get a good image. That is not the curator's job; it's the artist's job.

If you are going to take your own digital images you need to carefully look in the image display on the back of your camera. Unless you intentionally built a trapezoid you better be able to see that each edge of the quilt is parallel with the window. If you don't have a tripod invest in one.

You need to learn how to closely crop an image and size it properly. File names are of necessity consistent. They should have your last name, height x width, (which is my fault, not in the prospectus), and resolution. Even if that is perfect I still have to rename the file to add your entrant's number; today I'm adding a notation that tells scale.

I am looking at a lot of work that would lose all consideration if a panel of three jurors were evaluating the images. One of the most exquisite works is nicely, closely cropped. However, the artist did not remove the vestiges of the garden in the background.

Anne Copeland and the FiberArts Connection of Southern California have worked very hard to create openings for beginning and emerging artists. Anne has proven time and again that the work of artists with unknown names is equal to or of greater quality than the work of names we know.

Now it's time for all of you to do your work on Google and find the online places that offer classes in everything from photography to photoshop elements. The information is out there; in many cases it costs nothing except self discipline to teach oneself. Quit depending on your children to do your computer work. If you are smart enough to create the quilts I'm looking at you are smart enough to teach yourself about your own computer.

The other issue that is really bothering me is one of scale. As you saw yesterday, The Quilters' Hall of Fame is a huge old house. The ceilings downstairs are ten feet high. Upstairs the ceilings are nine feet.

As I work my way through and scale these images so that each may be considered equally according to their size, image, and merit, I am concerned. I have already cut ten inch strips of foam core to mock up the walls. When I compare the scaled image on my monitor and the foam core I worry.

Many of these lovely works are very small scale. How do I arrange the exhibition so that the intimacy of these works is not lost in a huge space?

As artists do you ever consider how and where your work will be hung? Have you ever thought about scale? If not, it's time to put those issues into your thinking caps.

Sorry to be so harsh today. I set out to give you a good look at the curatorial process. Now you've seen the darker side. So, we need to charge up four hours today, two to photoshop. The woman hours are adding up. If you are a non profit there is no way you can fund an exhibition if you have to hire help.

Now, before anyone has a nervous breakdown, all these issues are mine to work out. This is going to be a knock out of an exhibition.

She Made Her Mark -- Day Six

Well, day six is sort of squirmy. Maybe it's me that's squirmy. I'm heartily sick of the back brace that allows me to sit upright in what a doctor considers comfort.

I've been through this image deck again and again. I've sorted it six ways from sunday. Sorting is about useless when it comes to setting the sequencing of an exhibition. The Marie Webster House, The Quilters' Hall of Fame is an Edwardian mansion built in early in the first decade of the twentieth century.






This image is the floor plan of the entry and main area in the building. It shows the architectural vestiges of the Victorian era. Note the main staircase in the very large entry hall. On back you see the servant's stairs.

From two thousand miles away it's a bit difficult to envision the traffic flow. An exhibition has to grab a visitor and pull them along in a predetermined path. It's particularly important in a space such as this. As 80%+ of the population is right handed and everyone in America drives to the right of the center line of the road, it is normal and natural to live one's life in the continuous right turn sequence. It avoids all sorts of problems in life.

So, looking at this floor plan, the reception area opens directly on the staircase proceeding up. It is the most "drawing" architectural element. So, with right hand preerence, the keynote and first major exhibition area is just past the double pocket doors leading into the grand parlor. It's counter intuitive because the huge space of the pocket doors wants you to turn right. However, if you want the viewer to enter the grand parlor a bit farther back in the house, the enticement must be strong enough to be placed between the front door, the stair, and the entrance to the gift shop.

That done, the visitor can choose whether to work their way around the grand parlor in the continuous right turn of clock wise. So, the works selected for the grand hall~reception area and the grand parlor all have to speak to each other. It's like selecting voices for a large choir; each has it's own range yet each must be a comfortable and capable part of a congenial whole.



This image gives you the wall space of the interior of the grand parlor, the wall containing the pocket doors.

I had thought about doing the arithmetical acrobatics to scale color xerox images to match the scale of these drawings. Then, hum, you do call yourself an artist? Don't you? Eight inches to represent a ten foot high room doesn't seem quite sufficient.

Why not draw each wall in a one inch equals one foot? That will make, eventually a mock up of each room. You will be able to sort and try and fuss and fidget. The works will finally tell you where they belong. So, I'm thinking of searching out the B size quad pad. What? You have a T-square and the ability. Why not just re-draw each wall on foam core?

So, that is where my squirmy mind is taking me today. Choosing the works for an exhibition is the very least of the work. Creating the sequence, rhythm, balance, and cadence of the works is what excites the viewer and draws them through an exhibitin.

Bleght ! I've a lot of work to do.

She Made Her Mark - Day Five

Today was a putz around day. My back brace behaves as a corset; it cause all my innards to complain. So I complain, too.

I got all the xerox work done. Got the mail prepared and finally out.

Began to work the photo deck that's on the laptop. Very frustrating as some images and some details are missing. Add to that the fact that the image files were rigidly and properly built in entrant's numberical order.

iPhoto must have an odd sense of humor; forget numberical order, even the full shots and the details are scrambled beyond recognition. Add tri-focal glasses and a selection of focal lengths in the software from half inch thumbnails to four inch squares trying to match up full and detail was time consuming. I can either see all the images, which means I can't reallysee them or I can see one or two images. One or two are great, nice resolution; but where on earth is the detail to match.

Peg came in and spent at least five hours banging out the remaining forty percent of the data base work. Whew! That's done.

Found a set of images picked off someone's email to replace the CD images of an unentered work. Fixed that. Started comparing the entrants' numbers with the image numbers. Found a few glitches. Pushed and shoved and used up a line that said empty. Finally got everything matched up.

Another ten woman hour day. Mailing expenses, too. Xerox expenses, including color ink. The meter is running.

And the real work has not even begun. I've heard a rumor that the work was all done. WHAAAATTTtt??????????????? The work has not begun. All we have accomplished is the secretarial work. Let's see what day six, seven, eight, nine, and ten provide.

She Made Her Mark - Day Four

This box for entry forms that have been entered into the data base. That box for artists' statements. The shoebox for CDs that have had the images pulled off of them.

The tape measure holds down one group of papers; the stapler another. Another shoebox holds other stuff. Every, and I mean every piece of paper and Cd must have the same entry number. Every bit of computer data has to be backed up by plain old paper.

For day four, we have completed the remaining 15% of the image file building. There still remains about 40% of the database entry to go. Peg took one look at me and said, I don't think we will get much done today.

So for our two hours each we entered the image files in the iPhoto6 software and took a look at the slide show. OH, oh. One file is in a format incompatible. Hum, drag and drop doesn't tell me those things. iPhoto doesn't tell me which image is bunk. Oh, my, oh, my.

Well, we had loaded the 72dpi into the macbook. Came over and loaded both the 72dpi and the 300dpi into the iMac. Now we have five incompatible format files. groan. I have a message out to my Spider. Maybe he has a quick trick for identifying. I certainly do not wish to drop each and every one of these files into Photoshop to read the entire label. Maybe help will tell me how to expand the Information panel in iPhoto.

The slide show was highly professional and holds all sorts of possibilities. Now, we just have to do a whole bunch more grunt work.

She Made Her Mark - Day Three

This is just barely the beginning of Day Three. By the end of the day this waste basket will be full to overflowing.

Since none of the packaging is light enough to go through the shredder my husband has decided on a novel way to foil the identity thieves.

Take the big kitchen garbage. Tear up all the envelopes manually as well as can be done. Then proceed through the house and the garden courtyard and the garage scooping cat litter boxes along the way. Tie the bag shut and leave for the garbage man.

See, you really did not need a shredder did you?

Today, although we spent eight hours we accomplished only eight percent of the work load. I am at fault. I mis-saved a database in an arcane Windows format. Normally my iMac will open and translate all of these. Nope, not this one. Searched and searched - even looking into iBackup to see if we could retrieve the file.

We would have saved a lot of time if we had just bitten our tongues and re-entered the data. The entry forms were easily available. The image files were separate and safe.

So, for this, not one of our better days, we add eight hours at $20 per hour for $160US. We're at 85% of the administrative work done. Our cost to date is $520. Once we have everything entered we will be a long, long way from being done.

Again, please remember the FiberArts Connection of Southern California. Without that organization there is no venue for the beginning artist to learn the ins and outs of entering professional exhibitions.

Oh, by the way, the few image files I have opened looking for detail shots, tell me there is NO WAY that this exhibition is anything but top notch professional. It's an amazing thing that is happening here. Very skilled artists with names no one has noticed publicly are producing very exciting work.

She Made Her Mark - Day Two

Day two accomplished another 39% of the data entry and the image entries. We really like seeing the pile of mail shrink and the computer files grow.

We have another eighteen woman hours invested. Another $180US that no one has ever seen has been invested in the common good of textile art.

It's been rather interesting. Peg and I are like Mutt and Jeff. I'm short and round and Peg is tall and lean. Neither workspace works perfectly for either of us.

But we are soldiering on.

Well, Shame On Me

I left you a nice little photo as a teaser for She Made Her Mark about a week ago. Then I went AWOL again. Healing bodies, unfortunately, do not work to order or expectation as the same body and mind worked last year. The mind is still as questionable as the caterpillar climbing up my spine; it works when and if it wants to.

The work on doing the administrative intake on She Made Her Mark has begun. Peg Keeney, a friend and colleague who is in the Southwest to avoid the worst of winter's rigors has kindly volunteered her help in building the database. However, she has brought 27ºF early mornings with her.

The first day she set up the database. We had to make sure we got all the bits of information we would need to refer back to. It was decided to give each entrant a number and then to label the images as A, B, or C, as full images ad a, b, or c, as detail images. Name, phone, email, blood type, preferences in coffee, chocolate?; everything went into the planning.

Once we had decided that I went to work building the image files. Thank the universe for a two computer household. It's not quite perfect as each machine has a different version in iPhoto. Since the iMac has the150GB external hard drive I decided to keep images on desk folders and then input them in bulk into the big machine.

Loading images does not mean looking at them. It simply means first a drag and drop and then a renanimg of the file; each file name has to have entry number, last name, size of work, and then dpi and format. There were lots of individual creative efforts that had to be reduced to a simple, standard. It takes a lot of time.

About forty per cent of the time the artist had not marked the detail shot. Open Photoshop, inspect all images, correct file name. Time and frustration.

Loading images also means making two folders. One large image folder at 300dpi is held aside and backed up on CD.

These 300 dpi files mean that I can respond to any magazine editor, in a matter of minutes. I get requests for certain artists or images from all over the world. With the 300 dpi file I can upload whatever the editor needs to a non public space on my website; I email the editor the hotlink. Your path to fame and fortune are secure. No waiting around for the mail man. No bouncing of an image too large for an email.

We worked steadily for four and a half hours each. No lolly gagging around and talking shop. We are on a mission. This first day we were able to get 38% of the entries loaded.

Thirty Eight percent? Is that good or bad. It's neither; it just is. The day's accounting based on whether you had phoned Kelly Girls was nine woman hours. Nine hours of volunteer labor at market rate of $20 an hour is $180US. That's just for the first day and getting the set up and a small portion of the work done.

Neither Peg nor I are being paid; we are volunteers. The point of the accounting is to allow you to think about the time, overhead, and headaches of putting together an exhibition. We'll keep the accounting going.

Another point of the accounting is to encourage you to help support the good work being done by Anne Copeland, FiberArt Connection of Southern California. Please give a click to Anne's name and make a tax deductible donation. The work she does on a shoestring is really quite amazing. But like all shoestrings things break, office supplies are needed, the electric bill needs paid. Anne needs your help for this organization to grow to the point that Anne has an annual salary. Help do your part, please and thank you.

Short Side Track - Everyone But Me

Already Knows I'm Warped. Those who are close to me know that I can not take narcotics as they make me more of crazy person than I already am. So I thought you should see what I saw earlier in the day.






So I get myself forty miles to the neurosurgeon, see Keith, my favorite radiologist, who gifts me with these images of my innarnds. I get home. It's 10:30 in the morning. I am still way tired over from last night's medications. I went back to bed for almost twenty hours.

It's not that I hurt horrible. I can walk. Barbara, my friend from New Mexico, cautioned me in the hospital, "No skipping to the bathroom!" "Not until next year"

Well it's next year and I can skip. I am capable of getting anything and everything done. I just have to focus my mind and do the work. So let's take a look at the work:

Dressed for Work

Three weeks to the day after back surgery that means my back is a junk yard unacceptable to the Department of Homeland Insanity, I have drawn myself up, much like Scarlett. I have work to do.

Tomorrow you will see the pile of mail. The next few days will show you the process of the administrative beginnings of volunteer, free lance, curating. We'll be accounting for hours invested. The number of images placed in files. All this before any image is ever inspected.

Stay tuned. It should be fun.

Things Are Happening

New Year's Ramble

The Impresssionists at First Hand was published in 1987. It is copyright, © Thames and Hudson. I had seen a reference to the book somewhere on line. When I went looking I found Abebooks. A second hand, paperback book with unbroken spine at $2US; the entire bill, including shipping from London was around $8.

I'm going to give you two paragraphs, the first and last of the introduction. Then I'll go rambling off on my own based on those ideas.

"One of the problems about history is that it involves the imposition of the past of the ideas of the present. Apparent in every branch of the subject, this tyranny of hindsight is especially evident where art is concerned. To coax into some comprehensible pattern the constantly changing manifestations of painting and sculpture, the mutability of taste, brutal categories have to be forced on recalcitrant phenomena. People, whether artists, critics, or mere spectators have to be denuded of their real personalities with all their various interests, their contradictions of character, their inconsistencies, and their awareness of the recurrent problem of matching action with intent, to be transformed into lay-figures, playing the role assigned to them in the art historian's drama.

"This book is not meant to be a continuous narrative; it is not a history of Impressionism. Rather it is an attempt to re-create the actuality of the lives and attitudes of a group of artists who by being categorized under a stylistic label have lost someting of their human dimension."

Now, these two paragraphs are © Thames and Hudson, 1987. They are published under the fair use for educational purposes doctrine of the copyright law.

So, what do these two paragraphs and this book have to do with artists, today, who happen to work with textiles? One of the ideas - just a one liner in the introduction about la ville lumiere, as Paris was called in the nineteenth century, put the physical geography of my upbringing, my life, and my travels into sharp focus.

I was raised in the nineteenth century agrarian tradition. One saw fields and animals, thickets and open woods. To take the Broadway Limited into Grand Central Station in New York City was the first glimpse of the broad boulevards and the population density of the cities that had grown out of the industrial age. What I experienced after World War II harkened back nearly one hundred years.

The Impressionists were experiencing this first hand long before I rode the train. Much of the work they did was in response to this massive upheaval in society. Life had not only changed, it looked different.

As you begin to read the reviews of the time, for instance: Renoir's Youth taken from La Vie Modern, 19 June, 1879, you begin to get glimpses not only of a painting or an artist but of a time, a place, a small grouping within society. It becomes a relationship with the fullness of life rather than looking at one painting in a row.

As an artist, what does this mean? I think, for me, it means not to concern myself with theories and schools of thought. No doubt someone in another time will pass judgment. If I am fortunate, get plenty of work done, get an exhibition, I may find myself facing a scathing review of work I know full well is good.

It is rather comforting to read of the agonies of gallery representation, the petty politics of exhibiting, the cost of living, the thoughts and ideas of one artist for the work of a colleague.

In another way it defines a time and place and situation that is past. It is unlikely that any one of us will find ourselves in close quarters with dozens of our colleagues. The world has changed that much.

I think one of the most valuable assest for learning in this particular book is the critique of one known artist about the works of another. It gives a framework for examining work and thinking about what qualities make it good. It examines theme, method, medium, and how all those things are inexplicably intertwined with life.