Hanging the Show – Displays and Cases

After the morning of hanging all the wall pieces, we were pretty tired, but we decided to press on with the displays.  Gallery One had pedestals we could use to elevate our displays to viewing height, but they had no plexiglas cubes to cover the art, and there weren’t enough pedestals to display all the books and educational materials we wanted to use.

One of our members, Paulette, was not dismayed.  She contacted the Clymer Museum of Art (right next door) and was told we could borrow some pedestals and cubes from them if we could move them ourselves.  There’s an elevator in Gallery One, but not in the Clymer, and the pedestals would have to be moved by hand downstairs and onto the sidewalk, into the Gallery One elevator and up to the Eveleth Green Gallery!

Enter the knights in shining armor!  Abigail and Grace’s father and brothers volunteered to provide the muscle, and the deed was done.  Many thanks, guys.

After cleaning the pedestals and the insides of the cubes, we arranged the lower pedestals against the walls, and the three large tall pedestals in a wide triangle in the center of the gallery floor, with room for people to examine the displays from all sides.

Into the lower cases we put larger examples of books members of our guild have made, and in two of the tall cases in the center of the gallery, we displayed smaller examples of bookarts, as well as pages from an alphabet book project we worked on as a group a couple of years ago.

The third tall pedestal was reserved for Linda’s stunning collection of antique calligraphy tools, quills (both cut and uncut), powdered pigments and other tools of the trade.  This display created a real buzz during the opening of the show, and it was gratifying to see the interest in our craft.

All that was left to do was to arrange the entrance to our show, clean the outsides of the cubes, gather up the miscellaneous hanging equipment, sweep the floor, and go home to rest up for the opening night party!

Piece of cake!