Planning a Second Installation

Next week my show, Biomorph, opens at Esvelt Gallery at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, WA. We even got some press! The show opens January 6 and runs through February 6 with a reception January 14 at 1pm. The gallery, on Columbia Basin College's campus, is open M-Th 8am - 8:30pm and Friday 8-noon. My work will be sharing the gallery with paintings by Laura Ahola-Young. 

a similar wall installation for "From the Ground Up" at Larson Gallery in 2012

This Friday I install the show, but I don't have a lot of time to get the pieces set up. The free standing work shouldn't be an issue, but the two wall installations need more planning time and require more time to attach them to the wall. I laid out the bulb installation on paper before our winter vacation (New Hampshire and New York City were a wonderful, and much needed, interruption of my work time).

placing the work as it will hang on the wall

In the past when I have put up this type of installation, I have usually gone in to the gallery, laid out the work on the floor in front of the wall and started to arrange them to fit the space. Then I start to mark the position of the pieces, measure the space between the holes if the piece has more than one, and find a screw or nail that fits. This process works fine and allows me to adjust the installation to quirks in the space. For Yakima River Diaries in at Central Washington University's gallery, I put a piece with hair above an air vent so the hair would move in the air current. But planning and installing at the site tends to stretch out the day beyond the limits I believe I will have on Friday.

paper with sketches for placement of pieces, notes and marks for screw and nail placement

So this time I started planning at home. Like I said in my previous post, I don't actually have the space for laying out a whole installation in my home. I ended up putting away the leaf in the table, and moving chairs out of the way so I could fit a 4' x 7'  roll of paper on the floor of the dining room. Then I laid out the pieces on the paper, trying to stretch the work from a reasonable distance above where floor will be to close to the top of the wall. The wall is 4'4" wide and I'm planning for the installation to wrap around the wall with at least one piece on the top edge of the wall.

closer view of my planning diagram

After I placed the pieces, trying to anticipate how they will look when installed vertically in the gallery (as opposed to flat on the floor), I traced and sketched the position of the pieces in pencil.  For a few pieces, I labeled the sketches with colors because I will have help installing the work on Friday. I also put a Sharpie mark on the paper where I want the nail or screw to be placed. Some of the pieces have one hole in the back, others two or three. For the pieces with multiple holes, I carefully measured the distance between the holes and the angle I want them positioned.

old pieces with small holes (what was I thinking?)

I also measured the size of the opening. The most recent pieces have large holes in the back so they can accommodate a large screw head, but older pieces weren't planned as well and therefore have small holes that only will fit a nail or very narrow screw head.

new piece (from my sabbatical) with a large hole and slot for easier hanging

On December 31, I finished planning the front wall, but I kept out some pieces for the wrap around wall. I plan to place them on a second piece of paper while my daughter is distracted playing games with my husband. I also have a few last minute pieces to epoxy together before the show can be packed up and taken down to Tricities for installation.

extra pieces in a tight proximation of the second wall