A few days ago, I packed up the car with several paintings and headed down to Richmond for an exhibit. It’s about a 5 hour drive, to and from, with no traffic. Usually, I-95 has a lot of traffic. I was bracing for the worst and had my venti chai, a big bottle of water and an ipod full of music with me.
Apparently I hadn’t updated my ipod in awhile so the audio book, Eckhart Tolle’s “The power of now,” was nowhere to be found and none of my latest music either. I decided to just hit shuffle and enjoy a strange mix of Celtic Woman, Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand, Tenacious D and Robyn (to name a few) instead.
{photo credit: Steve Helber}
After a couple of hours in the car, I turn onto Virginia State Capitol grounds in Richmond to get my parking directions before heading to the General Assembly Building on the next street. Of course the state police guard pointed out that my license tags had expired but luckily didn’t give me a ticket.
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson designed the Virginia State Capitol building? He modeled it after the Maison Carrée, a famous building in southern France.
Trying to organize
After some security screening, I headed up to the 3rd floor to look at the 18 feet wall space and figure out how to hang the paintings I had selected. I leaned them against the wall to kinda eyeball what would look the best. Melanie, my contact person, was so kind! She helped me figure out (and validate) my decisions while attending to several other artists as well.
All the paintings are hanging from the molding by fish line. It was an art in itself trying to get
all the paintings hanging at the height I wanted them at. The spacing is a little off by oh well.
Good enough.
After 1.5 hours (of hanging the paintings from the molding hooks with fish line and trying to get each painting hanging at the height I wanted it at), this is the result! Whew. It’s a good thing I have some fishing under my belt so I knew what knot to use when tying the line to the canvas.
My art is facing the offices of five Virginia state senators and boy were the admin ladies thrilled to be looking at such “pretty, happy and bright colors!” It made me very happy to hear.
Here’s a look at my art from the side where you can also see some
other art to the left and far right.
56 Virginia artists are participating in the exhibit this year, all handpicked by Melanie. She saw my art at the Art Affair last fall and I’m honored to be included and hope this isn’t the last time. Here’s a local TV segment about the show from a previous year.
The exhibit runs from Jan. 7 to Feb. 26 when the General Assembly is in session and is meant to inspire legislators, lawmakers, lobbyist and other important people as they make tough decisions in the upcoming weeks. Keep your fingers crossed that I’ll be bringing home fewer paintings than I brought down.
I didn’t get any traffic on the way home and managed to get my inspection and emissions done the same afternoon. 🙂
xo,
e.
