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Art stuff

Thursday, Mar. 10, 2005
11:43 AM

I have spent the past two days volunteering for the SAMA conference that starts next week. I went to the Ellipse Arts Center in Arlington to help unpack mosaics for the juried show that's part of the conference. It was hard work but a lot of fun. It was cool to get a sneak preview of the show. While there are some pieces that are not to my personal taste, there isn't a dud among them. I think that's a really good thing, considering the last show I saw, at the conference in Miami two years ago, had some very strange pieces that made me wonder what the jurors were smoking. Oh, if you're wondering, I submitted a piece for this show but it didn't get picked.

Anyway, I helped unpack probably about fifty pieces. Some of them were packed really well, others not so much. A surprising number of them had some damage, even the ones that were packed well, but most of it was minor. I spent probably a good twenty minutes sticking tiny little pieces of smalti back on one piece. We had opened the shipping box and there was smalti everywhere. It was like putting a puzzle together, which is what mosaics are like anyway, but I didn't design or create that particular puzzle! We still had a few tiny chips left over when we finally gave up, but the mosaic looked fine. We were able to repair most of the damaged pieces, thankfully.

Yesterday I went back to help arrange the show, basically putting all the pieces where they're going to be when the show opens to the public. I was working with two ladies who work at the Ellipse and another lady who's a SAMA member and is coordinating the shows for the conference. I've never done anything like that and it was really fun and educational for me. I would have thought that there would be all this snobby art talk but it was really just about what looks good together. There were some pieces that just didn't work well with any other pieces so they got their own space on each side of a big square column in the middle of the gallery. Everything came together slowly but in the end it all worked. Yay!

I really enjoyed doing all that stuff at the gallery. I know they're looking for volunteers on a regular basis, and I'd consider doing that, but the gallery is in Arlington and I don't think I'd want to commute there from Herndon. It did give me an idea to check out the Reston arts center (GRACE) and see if they need volunteers or even paid workers. I doubt it would pay much but it would be closer than where I work now and much more in line with where I want my career to go.

Well, I have fifty million errands to run for the conference today so I better get going. Ciao!


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