Well I got everything finished on Tuesday at Craig Krull. Didn’t have to go back on Wednesday, which was good. That means I won’t have to drive back to Santa Monica twice. I wound up working until 5:30 on Tuesday, and spent two hours in my car driving back to Pasadena. Wrong time to leave the West Side, that’s for sure! But I enjoyed sitting in my car because I was literally on my feet all day.

I didn’t even think it was possible to be on my feet all day anymore, but I defied all possibilities because of sheer will power. That and being completely crazy. I sometimes get too focused on what I am doing that I forget to take care of what my body needs. That was one of those days. I didn’t even stop to pee until the day was nearly over. I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably wouldn’t have even eaten if Craig didn’t bring me a little pizza.

Installing this Journal Project takes all day. Why? Because first I have to cut and loop drafting tape for the backs of all the drawings and place them all on the wall just so. Then I have to make holes for the sewing pins with steel thumb tacks (push pins) and a hammer – then remove those push pins and replace them with the colored sewing pins. You can’t just push the sewing pins into the wall by themselves because the heads are made of glass. They will shatter and cut your thumbs if you try it that way, so you have to make holes in the wall first with the push pins. Trust me, it takes a long time. But here it is, finished.

Then we figured out where all the paintings were to go and that didn’t take all that much time, but it was strategic. Craig has been doing this kind of thing for decades now, so he is pretty darn good at it.

The plastic wrapping are still on these paintings in these pictures by the way, in case you can’t tell. I’m not posting any pictures of the final installation yet because I want to wait until after the opening, but Robert the installer did an amazing job.

Here is a pic of Robert and Craig in Craig’s office. They are putting together the little exhibit of Nicole Strasburg‘s paintings that will be on display in there. I love her work, as well as Phranc’s and John Huggins’ shows too.

Here is one of Nicole’s little paintings:

The paintings are super small, which makes them really intimate and special, I think. They are priced very reasonably too.

John Huggins‘ work was all installed by the time I was finished with my Journal drawings. His photos are all framed so pretty in thick white frames and all the photos are the same size, pretty large. My favorite I think is this sailboat:

And I’m in love with Phranc‘s teady bear (Swelly) in her TOYS show. She makes everything out of cardboard:

I think it’s going to be a pretty darn good show, if I do say so myself.

I thought that I wasn’t going to have enough pieces with the 20 I had ready to go, but much to my relief, we were able to edit out four. I was so happy about that because I didn’t want to hang any in a grid (I do not like when my work is hung in this way) …well it depends on which work honestly. I have some work that I’ve made that is purposely made to to be hung in grids and some that is just not and these paintings are not meant to be hung over each other, even though they were hung like this at the Exodus exhibition however. That still wasn’t quite a grid formation though. Craig and I were on the same page as far as the work having plenty of wall space around each painting. I think it looks really great. I am happy!

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving by the way. I did. Michael and I made a traditional meal just for ourselves, so we have a lot of food left over. Still, we won’t have any problem eating it.