I like to help my boyfriend out where i can. Unfortunately, we are both chronic procrastinators, so what it usually will come down to is "who has the most time available to finish the task", down to the sheer minute. Jim curates the art gallery at the Hinge Cafe in Port Richmond, and this month, the theme was to have individual artists display gifty/valentines day pieces. There were a few hurdles to overcome including the fact that now instead of canvases or frames, which are relatively easy to hang on the walls, we were dealing with pillows, jewelry, wallets and stationary. After frantically realizing that we had cut it too close, (we still had not settled on materials, design and set-up as of midnight the night before the show opening), I volunteered to make it happen as i had off from both work and school the next day. So after rat-racing all day and only $30 in materials later, I had settled on a "floating Grecian-garden" motif, complete with braided yarn suspending pillow hammocks, suspended beds of tie-wallets, panels of fabric representing colums, and jewelry and stationary nailed to the wall in abstract formations. Jim helped me to really pull everything together at the end, (thank God we can be on the same wave length easily and quickly under pressure), and it wound up looking exactly as I had hoped.
Greecian costume and design has by far been my favorite era to study in both fashion history and art history this quarter, and I believe that this was somewhat reflected and incorporated in my work at the gallery. I would have never really thought to go Greek before, but now I see that I was definitely influenced by its design. What Jim and I were able to accomplish for the gallery is beautiful to me because I was able to select colors, textures, designs and plans that I love, and I feel i was able to bring them all together in a very aesthetically pleasing way. When i walked into the gallery later, after I had been in the cafe area, the colors and the glow of the diamond string lights literally made me feel as though i was not in the same stark, blank canvased room I had performed surgery on just earlier that afternoon. I felt as though I were actually in Greece, or at least somewhere that was not east Philly. The combination of how quickly and concretely the exact idea had come to me sometime around 2a.m the night before, and how accurately i was able to recreate it, and really just how nice i think it turned out speaks beauty to me. I suppose working under pressure at the last minute is not really all that bad, anyway.
