The Orcas Center is well used. On a Wednesday, when Pam and I brought our 50 paintings to be hung, there was: a yoga class, a drawing class, a private violin lesson, a middle-school performance of "Patience" (Gilbert and Sullivan), and another group that was hanging the results of their advanced painting class in the large classroom next door. We might have preferred a more meditative atmosphere for our endeavors but it was heartwarming to see a thriving arts community on Orcas Island.

Here are some things I learned: 

1. Make the wire hangars on the back of the work loose enough so that you can reach behind as you're trying to locate it on the hook on the wall. Ideally, every wire will pulls up to the same spot on the back of the painting, around 2 1/2 inches. That way you can set the hooks in the wall without re-measuring each time.

2. We hung our paintings in the French studio style, with dense groupings which, we hoped, enhanced each individual piece through conversation with the nearby pieces. In general, my saturated colors and earth themes went low and Pam's delicate colors and sky themes went high. But not always. 
     We could hear the people in the classroom discussing hanging height and proximity, but when we looked, they had been hanging one piece per 4 foot panel, at eye height, all the way around. The effect was formal and in a way, more respectful of individual pieces since their placement and surroundings were of lesser importance.

3. Politely but firmly fend off help! We had a team of volunteers who were eager to help. But, what with the middle-school performance and the slew of people who marched hither and yon, and the friendly people who made remarks, we both found that help was not very. Sad, but true.

4. Supplies list: 
The paintings, with wire hangars, packed in boxes and packing material designed to keep the work from slipping around. Don't bother to label the boxes, as they'll be re-packed differently at the end of the show.
Wall labels, 14 pt type, with: Artist/Title/Year/Medium/Price
Inventory list, double-spaced, with: Title/Dimensions/Price
Toolbox with: (Don't trust the nice old ladies who claim that their tool kit has everything we need. It doesn't.) Hangars and nails, hammer, tape measure, spirit level, sticky tape to temporarily mark walls, notebook and pen. Discount card for the hardware store.
Stepladder
Camera

5. The most important thing is a "yes and" instead of the "no but" attitude.
Especially when hanging a show with a person who has slightly different tastes, it's important to remember the overall magnificence and joy of the universe. Anything smaller than the universe is a temporary problem. Don't worry about it. To remember this, keep your blood sugar stable.

I was Skyping with a dear friend who is worried and sad. In my efforts to understand what she was feeling I did a quick watercolor of her.

I hope to do a series of nudes of older bodies. For one thing, there are a lot of us out there. Not everybody is 22. For another thing, I actually like the older bodies that I've seen. That's not all that many, mind you, but I like the sense that the world has left its mark. Younger people, to me, seem to have more generic bodies, ones that follow the biological template. But after a few decades, the scars and bites of life become unavoidably important. 

This one is entitled "The Nest."

I visited Mom, who recognizes me but doesn't really track much. 

I'm continuing to make smaller paintings on pieces of high-end plywood left over from making bookshelves. They're looser, more chipper than my larger ones. Working on board is fun! Smoother and the resistance of the board makes me feel like it's talking to me.

In order to use Photoshop, I had to partition my computer. One side now has Lion, the other Snow Leopard. Unfortunately, the Time Machine backup was empty (I did check beforehand, but perhaps the process of partitioning and wiping the computer also wiped the backup???). I do have a manual backup from March of 2011. Back then, I was a year younger and less wise. Back then, the world was a different place. 

After a suitable period of mourning, I will set my face forward and proceed. At least I can use Photoshop as I do so.

Sometimes a painting just doesn't pull together. I was working on one of rocks, and either the colors or the composition just didn't work. If I knew which, maybe I could have fixed it, but several days of fussing at it improved nothing.

So, I threw caution to the winds and just messed around.

My dear old neighbor just lost an eye from a woodworking accident. So it was with some trepidation that I began the process of framing.

There are slabs of wood lying about everywhere on our land. We had two bouts of housebuilding, both of which were in the era when my children were young and we had far too many projects to keep track of. Carpenters, seeing my chaotic situation, made their own decisions about where to put scraps. 

In the first year of having an empty nest (sort of, we do have a young boarder living with us), I've been poking away at the piles. Any slab of wood that's around 1 1/2" thick and not so wide that I would have to put it to an Important Use, is fair game. Unless it's hopelessly rotten, and even then, I try.

I wash it off and then run it through the planer. Because I don't always get all the nails out, my planer blades are dinged up, but because I live in an isolated place, I can't just pop out to get more blades. Instead, I run the boards back through the other way around. 

Then, I set the blade on the table saw to rip 1/2" boards from the stock. This is an edgy business (no pun intended) because table saws account for zillions of chopped-off fingers every year. I wear a chainsaw helmet as a combined ear protector/eye shield, but my fingers are out there in the open. I can't use a pusher with some of the unwieldy boards that I have, so I just breathe mindfully and try to stay hyper-alert.

Once the boards are ripped, they go through the planer again. 

Next, I hold them up against the finished painting's edges, mark where they should be mitered, and use the chop saw to get the ends at 45º. You would think I could simply use a template, but no. Each 24x 18" painting is off by as much as 1/4". 

Then, I start the compressor and use the nail gun to set the frames against the paintings with little brads. A small % of these nails suddenly take it into their heads to turn 90º and so I have to watch my fingers as I work. They punch tiny holes into the canvas, and so far I don't know what to do about that. I don't have a good enough wire cutter to nip the brads off flush, and I can't find my nail punch to drive them up back through the canvas frame and the picture frame. So, these get set aside so I can address them after the next visit to the mainland and a hardware store.

And that's what I did yesterday. On the weekend, I'll sand and varnish the frames.