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.

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.