More Art Business

 Another nice day, with another prediction of rain for a few days from now, so another good Studio day. I bought a few pieces of mat board the other day (no foam core available in that so called art store) so I could complete my framing for the upcoming show.  I know from experience that I can use mat board as a backing board, and yesterday I went down the basement to see if I could find any metal frame spacers to use.  (flexible metal pieces that slide between the mat and the frame, which I had in great quantity in my tool box, now in inaccessible storage)  Had enough for one piece, at least of those frames not on shelves.  The rest I'd just double up.  

After dropping off equipment and tools in my space, I stopped by the office, but Jeanne was in a meeting.  I took advantage of being there to show the most recent block to Katelyn, as in the past she had expressed some interest in woodcut.   She did seem impressed with my ink wash drawing, something probably new to her, but I imagine that most people don't know one can use a brush and ink on a block drawing.  She had a few questions about cutting, then I went to my Studio to work on the day's project.

The good news was that I cut all the windows the other day, so all I had to do was cut rectangles for the backing boards and mount everything.  Not that simple.  All three prints needed to be titled, editioned, and signed, with little room to spare.  No linen tape at that store either, which means using one of my old rolls, and it's just not as sticky as it use to be.  The paper on the two vertical prints was too large for the frames, so I had to trim those before mounting anything.  One wire still needed to be moved to the other sides.  And I decided not to take a second trip to my car to get my measuring stick, and just use the cut window mats, and had to redo one of my backing boards.  

But in the end it all got done.   Just using an x-acto knife, it's even easier to cut backing boards on my mat cutting machine than window mats.  Had a bottle of glue in my bag to supplement what was on the linen tape, and even had my homemade calibration tool in my pencil case, so could make all the wires match up to my standard 2 inch below the frame spacing.  For music I had brought the rock/pop book and from this selected my copy of Tom Waits' Beautiful Maladies compilation album.  A recent commercial reminded me of him.  If you want to know more, find it at February, 2020 on this blog.

When all was done, I had three framed prints for the upcoming show.  I left them all there, as this is the building that they will go to anyway.  

I still want to create back labels for each print, but that can be done quickly on a computer.  I put everything away, cleaned up, and stopped back at the office.  Jeanne was available this time, so I was able to find out a little more.  Work is to be dropped off the first week of October, though where has yet to be determined.  The new hanging system should be installed by then, so we can hang our own pieces.  (assigned spaces yet to be determined)  I guess I'll find out soon.