You Don't Know their Story

I was asked to hang some paintings at a local wine bar.  The idea of showing my work somewhere other than school or my parents house was was exciting and nerve-racking at the same time.  Although it is just 5 paintings, it is a bigger deal to me than I thought.  I first planned on bringing in some paintings from my Abstract Painting class.  Mostly non-representational, larger, more marketable and pleasant paintings.  To my surprise, however, they wanted me to hang my more current pieces.  As it turns out, I am not the only person who likes controversy (who would have thunk it?). The Wine Vault has a main room with all of the wine, a larger room to relax, and a smaller room where my paintings are.  But the reason they're in the smaller room is because that is where they do all of their wine tastings.  People can drink wine and talk about my "thought provoking work."

The real problem here was hanging the paintings.  Since they usually only show smaller works on canvas or photographs, they hang the pieces by a hook attached to ribbon.  This, of course, did not hold my 6-foot-tall paintings.  The ribbon was holding, but not the hooks so I got some plastic hooks that I nailed in and hung that from the ribbon.  The next day I got a call saying my largest painting had fallen.  I reinforced it with two more hooks and it seemed fine.  Then, the next day I found out that all of my paintings had fallen.  Finally, I went to my dad.  Picture Hanging Wire!  Why didn't I think of that?  Now I just had to take them all down and put them back up again.  I never realized what went into hanging art work.  I always  assumed that my paintings would be easy since the stretchers are thick enough to just hang on two nails and that would be that.  You never know though, and you should always be prepared for where you will show your work.  Know your location and your materials (i.e. size and weight of your work).

Kudos to the real professional artists who know what they are doing.  I guess we all need a good learning experience.  It would be no fun for anyone if you always got it right on your first try.