Show Time

The opening at the Sharon Arts Center Exhibition Gallery is three days from today and thanks to lots of effort from many volunteers, 13,699 is complete and installed! I finished the piece on June 17, uncorked a bottle of Champagne and shared it with some friends, and then on my birthday, the 20th, started to take it all down. It took about 24 work hours over three days to disassemble the lines of bottle caps as each one had to be wrapped around cardboard. The frame and grid were moved and installed on Thursday, the 25th, and on Friday we started to unwrap lines and rehang them in the gallery. We finished yesterday with the fun part of adjusting each bottle cap on its line, and setting the lighting. The gallery space does wonders for 13,699 with a beautiful blue gray wall behind it for contrast and dramatic lighting casting shadows on the floor and the wall. After working on this project for such a long time, it feels unreal for it to be complete and installed.

Innate Gear has made a generous gift of stainless steel water bottles to this project. They will be awarded as prizes at two events that are scheduled during the exhibition. The Harris Center for Conservation Education is sponsoring a film, The Water Front, and discussion night on July 14th and Robert Wood, Water Quality Manager, will make a presentation on July 25th on his work in Guatemala with Water for People. Many thanks to Innate Gear for supporting me in my effort to raise awareness about water conservation.

Exhibition Countdown

The exhibition, WATER: Mystery & Plight, opens at the Sharon Arts Center Exhibition Gallery (www.sharonarts.org) on July 3. 13,699 will be installed and photographs of surfaces of water by Mary Lang will be displayed. Mary's photographs are abstract, contemplative color fields where scale is uncertain. Check them out at www.marylang.com. I'm co-curating this exhibit with Susan Callihan (www.suecallihan.com) and we've been busy taking care of all of the details of putting an exhibition together. The exhibition postcard is printed and at the mail house and the press releases are about to be sent out. Meanwhile, I've been trying to finish 13,699 and it's almost there! I need about 100 more lines to fill in some sparse areas and fortunately friends are showing up to help out with the final push. Once it's complete, however, it all has to come down string by string so that it can be moved to Peterborough. Colleen Clark, video artist, volunteered to film me talking briefly about the installation. Check it out on changents.com. There was another String-A-Thon at Harlow's Pub, which was successful. On May 16 I participated in Children in the Arts Festival in Peterborough, NH by setting up at the Sharon Arts Center Gallery for drilling and stringing. There was a steady stream of children and adults who helped out. The Starving Artist in Keene, NH invited me to do a presentation and have a stringing session in May. After working on 13,699 for such a long time, I'm very excited about displaying it in public. The opening is July 3rd from 5:00 to 7:00 and the exhibition will be up through August 2nd.