On May 17, we loaded 37 paintings into Tiny, our beloved Subaru Sambar. This was the culmination of a little over a year's worth of work. I had been meeting with military spouses, photographing them, and creating abstract figurative work that expressed the emotive side of being a military spouse. Now, it was time to hang the show.
Getting the work to the gallery space in Harlem was one of the more challenging aspects of hanging the show. How do you safely get that many pieces- and some rather large- into the city? Rent a moving truck? Who wants to drive a moving truck in the city? Who wants to try and street park in the city?
We decided that our Sambar was the best option! Strangely, our smallest vehicle (my husband and I) has the largest cargo capacity.
So, while my husband was slowly driving the paintings into NYC- I packed hanging hardware and four spouses into our other Subaru. Of course, they were military spouses. I absolutely couldn't have hung or had this show without them.
So, we show up in Harlem—again, with street-side parking—only it's NYC, and construction is happening across the street, so you can't leave your car parked there for any length of time. This meant that one of us always had to guard the van.
Oh wait, someone also had to guard the street-side freight elevator at all times.
It became a juggling act.
Sidenote: The building is home to several gallery spaces and prominent artist studios and was used in the filming of the series Pose. It also has one of the oldest in use, original-to-the-building freight elevators.
After the paintings were unloaded, we began curating the space. I chose this space for several reasons. One—I loved the aesthetics of the building, white brick and large I-beams painted firehouse red created a beautiful, rough, industrial aesthetic. These two elements sang to me when I initially walked in.
Two, it is immense (the building manager told me that this gallery space had been used for a Roller Derby party). I knew the pieces would work well spread out and allowed to breath.
We laid out the work, slowly moving them around and adjusting. We played with several ideas. However, we had given ourselves ONE day to hang the show and were rushing against a tight timeline; no one wants to get stuck in the city for rush hour!
We got most of the show hung, leaving only a few small items for the next day. (Thank you #whitemapletree #ml.osmon #melbaltero #mimilia and those other spouses that refuse to join social media!)
We were exhausted when we left that afternoon- but we accomplished so much. I loved the work in this space. Mostly, I was impressed by how well we work and how much fun we had.
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