The show is on...!

Yesterday evening I put up my paintings in the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company. When you talk to artists about putting up your first real show there is something you hear over and over again: it's way more work than you could imagine. The are wrong. It's actually way more work than you can imagine, even if you imagine it being way more work than you could possibly imagine :) As I had lots of warning along those lines I did an obscene amount of preparation for this show. And - surprise - it was still more work than I had imagined (especially after all that preparation).

But, I think it was worth it. The show looks very nice in this setting. Of course the setting has its unique challenges. For instance... brick walls. They give a very strong horizontal element to the space. Paintings that hang straight, don't look like it! I brought a level to make sure every painting hangs right, only to step back from each and unstraightening them so they look as if they were straight. It stresses a lesson I learnt early in art school: "In art you sometimes have to lie to tell the truth".

The coffee roasting company has hooks up in the wall so you can just hang wired artwork with long wires. This sounds easy. But it isn't quite so easy because those hooks are not evenly spaced (and they are high up). Sometimes you just cannot get a picture to hang exactly where you want it - only like 2 inches to the right. Or so. And by now I am convinced there is a special place in art hell for the inventor of picture hanging wire. Not that the alternatives would be so much better, really. And they definitely are more pricey :)

It's hard to put up a show. Especially when you do it for the first time. And I'm not even talking about deciding which pieces go together. And you don't want to get on people's nerves who are sitting there trying to enjoy a chat over coffee while you are busy hanging paintings around them. The main lesson I learnt yesterday: you absolutely need more than 2 hands! Ideally attached to two separate bodies! So next time I will bring help. If necessary, I'll pay somebody to help. You cannot do this easily by yourself. It's hard enough if there are two of you, but don't ever again try to do this by yourself. I know, I won't next time.

So, that said - check out the show at the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company. Have coffee (I love their "Cappucchino Ibarra"), check out the "Morning Glory bread" which is delicous (warning: it's a small meal). And enjoy the artworks (there are 12 paintings there - more than is shown here in the blog).

The show will be up till the end of June.