Moving Day

My Subaru with all the 16x20's and smaller

Jane's Honda Element with all the 18x24 and larger paintings

Here I am before we started to unload the 86 paintings I delivered to the Littleton Museum yesterday morning. My friend Jane and I got there right around 9:30 a.m. There were 3 volunteers checking in all the paintings; they checked the condition of the frames and then set them around the gallery; Kate helped Jane and I not only unload the cars, but load the carts and haul them inside. What a trooper.  Al and Sarah unwrapped and checked them in while we did the hauling. There was only one fatality, and that was the first painting I unloaded from my car. I tripped and hit the corner of a frame and damage it. Other than that, the only slow down was my painting titles on the spreadsheet I provided did not always match the names I had written on the backs of each piece itself (some of which had no title on them). Oops. By this time, Kate was checking in the paintings and she was very patient with me. The museum had printed out the titles in alpha order, making it hard to find if I wasn't close in guessing the first word in the title. I always sort by painting size, because I usually know what size a piece is by looking at it and I can find the right title that way. While Kate and I sorted out the odd titles, Jane folded bubble wrap and put smaller boxes into medium boxes into larger boxes, and by the time everything was done, she had also loaded up the cars! She sure made my life easy. Jane insists she had fun and was so pleased to be a part of the process. Bless her heart. She will also come on the return trip when the show comes down, which we envision we will be transporting way less paintings, of course! We left the museum before 11 a.m. Very efficient process.

Jane was tickled pink. She got to chat with the museums curator and the other two volunteers (Sarah and Al) while Kate and I sorted out our pile of mismatched names. She told me over lunch how excited they all are by the work they saw and what a great show this is going to be. I saw the curator really looking at a few pieces and Al (retired art teacher) told me as we were leaving that a number of pieces really got to him and took him to new places! That is what it is all about. Transporting people. Apparently they have never had this much work from one artist, so I said, use your judgment-if you don't want to hang them all, don't. But no, they said they can stack smaller pieces and the show was in the raw stages of ideas when I left. The actually hanging will be done Monday afternoon.  My house seems so empty!

I took the repaired frame back to the museum in the late afternoon, and everyone I met was so excited to meet me. The word was out that this was an exceptional show. Wow. Are they talking about me??? You all will have to judge that on your own. For those of you who will not make it to the show while it is up I hope to have a virtual tour for you to view in the next few weeks.