Okay, I haven't written in the last week because I've been hauling tuchus (thank you to obsessivejew.com for confirmation of the spelling) getting my photos ready for my exhibit at the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC). It was a longer, more complicated process than my brain was prepared for. It never would have happened without Pepe's help - I'm just not sure what people who aren't married to him do in order to get things done. Without his assistance I probably would have just thumbtacked stuff to the wall at odd angles.
Pepe built 25 frames. Actually, I built 5 of them, but since Pepe had to be present to make sure I didn't remove a finger, I'd say he gets the credit sort of in the same way that I baked the cake, my daughter just dumped in the flour, but we all say that she baked it because she's trying her best. He does fantastic work, such attention to detail, he sanded and painted the frames and in general was wildly productive. Meanwhile, I was measuring and cutting the mats. Doug Leckie in my department lead me through the mat cutting on the laser cutter. It was a pretty cool way to cut stuff, it did leave some singe marks (I can't remember the technical term for it) around the cut area but those sanded away fairly easily. I could see that becoming part of the overall aesthetic. Unfortunately, I didn't do all of the measurements with what is known as 'any degree of accuracy' and so eventually we did what I had been avoiding: went to Michaels and bought an expensive mat cutter. Then Pepe cut mats and I taped the pictures in place. The final step was to go to my office and use the commercial mat cutter to cut the cardboard to fit in the back of the frames and tack that in with nails.
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| MRC Exhibit Wall |
When those were all done, we took them over to the MRC and hung everything. They have some adjustable track lighting and if I could offer one piece of advice to anyone else who might hang in this gallery in the future, it would be: don't grab the adjustable lights by the metal backing of the halogen lights because you will immediately burn your finger to the point of blistering. That's the kind of advice you can expect to find here, regularly, on this helpful blog. All for free! Then, to relax after the hanging, we went to Taekwondo practice where I dislocated my pointer finger by upper-cutting a dummy. Once again, Pepe the helpful stepped in and re-located it. It felt wonderful. You can't kick my ass…I'll kick my own ass.
In the meantime, I've been watching more the B&H masterclass/event space talks. They are really fantastic. The best one that I've seen so far was Adam Marelli's "Bridging the Gap: Classical Art Design for Photographers" - I was both impressed by Morelli's fluency in classical art theory and history and by his ability to clearly explain and demonstrate the ideas. His work is also very impressive, he has been working on projects to document artisans around the world, places like Japan and Italy, and the quality of his images is superb. Definitely someone I am interested in emulating and learning more from. If I were young and pre-family, I would sell everything I have and apprentice myself to him (I can't imagine why he wouldn't want me following him around??)
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