White Oak Studio

I received a telephone call from Country Woman editor, Ann Kaiser, earlier this week. She had a few last minute questions for me and promised to e-mail the draft of her upcoming “Country Work Day” where she worked along with me in the art studio.

I got to read the copy, making a few minor suggestions, and best of all I got to relive the fun of those two days when Ann was here last September. Being a former newspaper writer myself, I found myself wanting to make more changes than suggestions. For examples, changing chocolate retreiver to chocolate Labrador Retriever and the like. But I kept myself under control. Ann is a consumate professional and so what, if the readers do not realize that Spirit is a Labrador retriver. It really isn’t all that important.

What is important is national exposure for my artwork and three pages of color photographs and a sweetly written story!

Watch for the October/November issue of County Woman magaine and the Garden-Grown Paper: Ann Goes for “Green” Papermaking with Michigan artist.

Because I have been hanging my own artwork, and the work of others in a gallery setting for more than fifteen years, I have a fairly highly developed sense of what is needed. In this case, I visited the library hall beforehand to see how work is hung there, spoke to the person in charge and made my plans.

When I arrived no one could locate the hooks and wires they promised me. So the decision to use our fishline was made (luckily I had brought it just in case.) Then after more than two hours of trying to hang artwork that kept falling off onto the floor, I discovered that I was expected to hang my precious work from the metal grids of an acoustical ceiling - an impossible task! And, worse yet, no one at the library bothered to inform me of this small issue.

Six hours and a crooked line of art later, we gave up and went with “the best we could do.” (Personally I prefer my artwork to all be X inches down from the ceiling and hanging in a nice tidy and straight line - like a professional gallery show.

The moral of the story here….ask how they hang their work and check, double check and triple check.

Lesson learned the hard way.