Installing the Exhibition

I was totally unprepared for and therefore thrown by the process of installing the exhibition. I discovered that I was responsible for painting my gallery walls. I have never done this before and this left me somewhat breathless with anxiety. I had to pick the brains of people more experienced in DIY re paint, paintbrushes, rollers, masking tape etc. I bought red paint for the 6 am paintings with the plan that only tiny bits of red would show through the holes of the sketchbook paper.  I then painted the other three walls white after which I painted an architrave of three lines at the bottom of the red wall and all but one white wall to reflect the architrave in the Friday Evening painting and the Burnout triptych.

For the gallery space itself, I had originally planned to recreate my bedroom with a plan to bring futons and artefacts from home to mirror the 3D video of me painting my 6 am paintings. Geraint Evans spoke strongly against this idea and encouraged me to ‘think gallery’ and to think of what bespoke things I would get made had I the funds to do so. We discussed a plinth for people to sit on while watching the 3D video and a counter for the tea that I was planning to serve the viewers while looking at my paintings.

Here are some photos of the process:  

I bought self adhesive magnets (north and south) for each of the corners of each 6 am painting, 300 in all at over £100, only to find that the magnets were repelled by the red paint and that the adhesive did not stick. I therefore had to change tack quickly. I searched for and found that glue dots do the job fairly well.

I then had to find a way of transporting the immaculate piece of giant white paper on which Friday Evening was painted from my house to the gallery. This needed two people. My daughter Tanya and I wrapped the whole piece of MDF in bubble wrap and carried this bulky and heavy load to my car. It only just fit inside with no room at all to spare. On the other side I asked Charlotte Roberts to help me carry the load to my gallery space. Thanks to both Tanya and Charlotte. I had planned that the paper would sit on a piece of OSB, cut to order and matching with the plinth and the counter that I had made. But the board was 5 cm too narrow and this left me with a major dilemma. How to display my painting? My daughter Anna suggested that I paint the edges of the MDF board upon which I had painted Friday Evening, then attach it to the short OSB board so as to create what is known in architectural terms as a shadow gap. Being new too the process of drilling and hefting, this seemed an impossible task to me and I was trying to meet the Friday evening deadline. But Rick Roberts and Nick Aston calmly stepped in to help. And it was done. Here is the result:

Conclusion

Well where am I today? These two years have been a Magical Mystery Tour for me and I thank Geraint Evans and Anna Bunting Branch for their encouragement and support, including their sometimes strong but incredibly accurate comments on the direction I should take in my art. I would like to thank Ursula Pelczar for her amazing patience and extraordinary ability to teach a person like me the vagaries and nuances not only of the Ricoh Theta 360 degree camera, but also the complicated Premier Pro programme that is used to edit the video. Without her gentle and willing presence this video would never have taken shape. Thanks too to Ashleigh in the woodwork department who through her sheer sternness facilitated my DIY skills to go from zilch to marginally competent in a very small space of time. The same to my classmates Rick Roberts and Nick Aston for their invaluable help , and especially to Rick for his can-do attitude. My thanks, too, to Uma Mahendran who has offered to help me out by playing ‘host’ in my space at the Final Grad show, thereby saving me hours of invigilation before my trip to the USA . I am also grateful to Lois Rowe, Mark Fairnington, Kriton Papadopoulos (for some tutorial support), Harriet Hedden and my friends Lorraine, Ruth and Juliet for their participation in my art adventures, their appreciation of my ideas and their critique of my work. My daughters, Anna and Tanya and my son-in law Nick have all expressed their liking or dislike for a painting-in-progress in the many Whatsapp images I have sent them: being artists of a kind in their own right, their comments have been invaluable to me. In the days just prior to the Final Grad show, when the exhibition was being installed Anna showed typical rock-like family solidarity in getting the show off the ground. And Tanya spent the better part of a Sunday putting the finishing touches to my website and business card.

While so much within me is still evolving, I now feel ready to launch myself into a second career as an artist.