Curating a Collection: Downsizing Art

We are culling our art.

Not my work (although I do that annually).  We are saying good bye to pieces we have collected over 35 plus years.  And while I have no problem hanging artwork floor to ceiling, my husband balks at trying to stuff a life time of frames into a "downsized" space.  I understand.  So how to proceed?

Miro (as in Joan Miro, the Spanish painter and sculptor) provides some guidance.

     "In a picture it should be possible to discover new things every time you see it.  But you can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again.  You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.  For me, a picture should be like sparks.  It must dazzle like the beauty of a woman or a poem.  It must have radiance...  

                                                               (Miro: I Work Like a Gardner) out of print

       

That elusive quality of "dazzle" is so personal.  What causes me to think for a lifetime may not interest someone else.  Thus this curating of our own collection will be a very personal and very difficult task.   I sit here miles and miles away from the art and make notes as to which pieces I cannot live without.  The reasons vary.  Re-sale value doesn't even figure into the equation.

Some pieces bring back wonderful memories (as the time we cashed in our emergency savings and bought our very first piece together, that piece by a Spanish painter still makes me think...about many things!)  Another piece I can't live without because it makes me laugh, I smiled the first time I laid eyes on it and I still get happy seeing it.  Then there is a tiny frame by a no-name starving artist whom I adored....such under recognized talent!  But that one is second only to the piece that no one likes but me...no-talent others claim but yet I get lost in it, over and over it calls me back.

What to do?

More Miro:

"More than the picture itself, what counts is what it throws off, what it exhales.  It doesn't matter if the picture is destroyed.  Art can die; what matters is that it should have sown seeds on the earth...A picture must be fertile.  It must give birth to a world."

So I believe that the pieces we happily bestow on grateful family and friends will have thrown their seeds in my direction.  Whether I continue to think about them (now in another locale) or never recall them again, their seeds are in my mental repertoire of image influences.  That's a rather comforting thought: I can send them out into the world to continue being fertile (perhaps this is what Marie Kondo really means).

So back to the difficult job of curating.  Back and forth, yes or no, in and out.  Each piece takes it's turn in the line up.  If there is an incentive to be harsh it is this: we dearly love collecting and will need free space to house new acquisitions.  I know Miro was discussing the qualities he valued in his own work, but they will serve us well in attempting to cull our precious collection.

For more information on the interview from "I Work Like a Gardner" go to the link from the wonderful blog: BrainPickings by Maria Popova.

ColorFully Challenged,
Cindy

Let's Be Unique

You R Unique

7 x 5 watercolor on paper and matted in white

for a standard 8 x 10 sized frame

$40 buy here

I know by blog-standards it appears that I have abandoned painting!  Our travels left me with a bad cold and my right shoulder is still not 100% so progress has been a little slow lately.  But I have many interesting pieces on the easel and I look forward to sharing them....they are huge by my standards.  Meanwhile I practiced a bit of drawing using some on-line photos posted specifically for artists to use.  The giraffe was only 8 days old when he had his photo made in an Australian zoo.  I decided to outfit him a la Lilly Pulitzer and had fun doing it.  Perfect for a little girl's room as a reminder that we are wonderful because of our differences...statement art, huh?

Need your input...

We are doing a bit of remodel/redecorating right now and have walls of art that will be reconfigured.  Some of these beautiful pieces will not make the cut.  Our tastes have changed, our spaces have changed, our interests have morphed.  None of these facts take away from the beauty of these original pieces we have collected over the years (I am not talking about art by me).  When you begin to curate your collection exactly what do you do with those you no longer wish to hang in your living space?

If you look at things with a financial eye I have no problem justifying that we got way more than $xxx amount of pleasure from these pieces, afterall, you don't love the same sofa for 25 years do you?  And we never buy art hoping to make money on it, altho several pieces have definitely increased in market value.  I am happy to gift pieces if I knew who wanted them; we are happy to donate pieces if we knew where they would be best utilized; and of course we would have no problem selling them if only we knew the best way to do so.

Have you ever dealt with this dilemma personally or helped someone who has?  Furniture is easy for me to part with, I take books to the library and things in between get recycled via a thrift store but art feels more personal to me; like I am responsible for finding it a "good home" where it will continue to be loved and respected.

If you have thoughts or suggestions please feel free to share them...I am ready to roll.

Promising art next week, I remain
Colorfully yours,
Cindy

The Art of Curating

If you have visited a museum you have heard the word "curator".  One definition for the post of the curator is that of 'content specialist'.  Often, depending on the size of the museum, the job also includes acquistion and interpretation of a collection.  And, in small towns, the job of curator usually includes the responsibility for hanging an exhibit.  (The word curate comes from a Latin word meaning to "take care.")

With shows I've been in I must admit that minimal care or thought went in to why a piece hung where.  Usually expediency or size dictated where something went.  But we all grow and for the next Pieces of 8 show we have given the job of curator a lot of thought.  Well, one of our members, Fay, has given it a lot of thought!  Fay was an interior designer and can spot a 1/4" off as easily as some can estimate the yardage to the tee.  I can do neither so I was thrilled when Fay stepped in and offered to design the hanging for our summer show: "Black and White and Red All Over."

We are scheduled to be at the King Center for the Performing Arts, in their Harris Gallery, during the month of July.  Fay asked for a detailed floorplan of the space (got it) and copies of all proposed art including sizes.  Then she got to work.

Fay took care to note the traffic pattern of persons entering the building.  What is the first thing they see she asked herself.  She also recognized that there was no automatic flow of traffic so she elected to design the walls based on symmetry of painting size and by alternating realistic work with more abstract pieces.  (In some shows progression of time or style may be a consideration for the order in which you see the work.)

Fay actually built a mock up or diarama of the room to scale.  She then did likewise with our art so that "hanging" them on the walls would give a true idea of space.  You will note that she chose to hang art with the center of each piece at eye level.  This is the way most museums hang work for maximum ease in viewing.  Each piece should have plenty of breathing space so that work does not compete for attention.  Curators note that eyeing the neighboring piece peripherally is fine as long as the art itself is not in focus.  The most common mistake amateurs make, one expert noted, is hanging too many pieces.

Many times the job of curator is also to select the work to be shown.  In this case we all decided that we would each submit our best 2 (self juried) and hand in one additional piece to be used at the discretion of the curator (Fay) as needed or desired to round out the show. 

Finally, the curator also has to decide on the placement of any verbiage, tags, labels and headlines used in the presentation.  We were just tickled that Fay stepped up for the job...having a pro-eye on the presentation can really make or break a show.

Here's one of my pieces for the show, titled "Black & White & Dead All Over." It is large, 40" x 30" and is a collage of newspapers with ink and paint, and, I hope makes a comment on the state of newspapers today.

You'll get another invitation to view the show as we approach July but since the behind the scenes work always interests me I thought I'd share with you some of thoses logistics.

Next time you visit a show or a museum take a little time to see if you can see what the curator had in mind in electing to hang certain pieces as he/she did.

Cindy