Art Gallery

Last year my daughter and I and maybe another person or two were batting around ideas and decided it would be cool to turn the hallway of our department into an art gallery to hang work done by our students. We thought it would be good to have more wall space for hanging stuff so we determined to paint our colors and design down around the corner and claim some more hallway that heads off to a stairwell and to a couple of other departments. We told any folks that happened by that we had been praying the Prayer of Jabez.

These kinds of ideas come in a flash of inspiration which takes only moments and in a few tens of minutes we had the whole plan sketched out with all kinds of “…and then we could…!” refinements. Accomplishing the work to execute the idea is a whole different thing. There is just never enough time to run after all the good ideas. But once in a while one just has to be done. Partly because it would just be so cool that you can’t not make it happen. Also because I need to occasionally put a large deposit of “This is so amazing! – You are such a valuable asset to this institution!” into my account which is continually depleted by minor irritation with my administration challenged, nebulous clock, artsy-fartsy wackiness that is wedged into academia at a rather odd angle. I consider it job security to occasionally tackle a project that nobody else around the place would ever think to do, let alone pull off on a shoestring, a wing, and a prayer the way we have to. It makes me more comfortable to once in a while kinda make up for the paperwork I get in late or the myriad other institutional stuff I’m terrible at.

So anyway, I have found myself the last week solid making this project happen that I thought would take a couple of days. (They always take several times as long as you think they will.) A large format printer was given to my daughter recently and we figured that we could afford to make the prints with it and thus get around the deal-breaking cost of having them done. But, of course, that added days of struggling with cantankerous computer equipment and software to the fun. It’s all basically done now, just short of 50 prints 13x17.5” or sizes close to that, mounted on foam core, edges blacked, and on the wall with separate foam core mounted names and majors of the photographers. It’s pretty impressive for our little college. As far as I know, there has never been any kind of art gallery on the campus and this is a pretty cool looking first effort. I have been collecting the better photos turned in by my students the last several years and had a nice trove to draw from.

Unfortunately, classes start the day after tomorrow and tonight at 10:00PM I found the surface of my desk for the first time since the middle of last semester. (It’s brown, by the way. I had forgotten.) And the editing room needs some major attention. And, oh yeah, I better get my lessons ready. Fortunately, I can pretty much pull the first few weeks worth out of the file and go. But it will be very busy. The ol’ blog here may get a bit quiet for a while. If you are a praying person, offer one up for me. Thanks!