As I've mentioned before, I am curating a national invitational exhibit of exceptional art quilts, Modern Materials, for an Oklahoma City gallery, Untitled[ArtSpace, scheduled for July-August, 2009. A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to OKC and took pictures of the space, plus did some planning with the staff.
Here is a picture of part of the main gallery space. I couldn't stand back far enough to get everything into the picture because of a couple of movable walls that were in my way. There are also two side galleries that you cannot see. All in all, there's about 8,000 square feet of space for me to fill. The pillars are 16' apart and the ceiling is 13' high, if that gives you some sense of the size. The strange white artwork that sits on the floor in the back left of the picture is a wonderful installation work by Petah Coyne, not Cousin Itt from the Addams Family.
Yesterday, I finished creating a scale model of the gallery out of foam core, scaled at 1/4" = 1 foot. I plan to print itty bitty pictures of the artwork and use them to figure out the placement of everything. If you see the pillar to the left of the entryway, that's about where I was standing when I took the picture above, facing toward the opposite corner. Now all I need is a white rat to run throughout the model, looking for cheese. It would drive my cat crazy except she's the only cat I've ever known who has let mice run all over her body and even rescued a baby mouse in distress.
I also started a curator's blog documenting the exhibit. I will be writing about the planning process, plus highlighting the artists and the work that will be in the show. If you would like to follow along, here is the link. Feel free to subscribe using the Feedblitz link in the left column. I have to admit that this post is very much like one of the posts I published for the new blog today, but I also wrote about one of the artists, Angela Moll. Given time, I will write about the rest of the 23 artists, in no particular order.
