As I said, I visited artists studios in Evergreen, CO, last weekend. One artist had a great wall for displaying her art. She had installed what appeared to be 1×4" planks in horizontal and vertical crossings. Across each was a series of nails and thumbtacks. These allow her to slap up a painting she’s working on or display a whole bunch of them for visitors like me–without having a bunch of holes in the wall.
This isn’t ideal for long-term installation of your artwork because the pattern of the boards interfere with an appreciation of the artwork. Might be better if the boards were painted the same color as the wall.
(By the way, I asked to get a picture of it, but she had no idea who I was and was suspicious of my intentions. I tried!)
Follow Alyson on Twitter
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Ohhh I would have loved to see that system!
It is always nice to see what others are doing and how they are doing it. I’m sorry she wouldn’t share … sometimes being overly cautious isn’t a good thing.
Some time ago, I remember seeing a photo of the studio interior of one of the impressionists. He had constructed numerous long narrow shelves with lips along one long wall. The shelves were spaced several feet apart. The room had a high ceiling, 12 to 15 feet. Many of his works in progress were set on the shelves for display and drying. Paintings covered the wall from floor to ceiling. My next real studio will have something like that.
This is a great idea. I would just use the 1 x 4′s as shelves for all of those framed works I have along the wall of my studio on the floor! Then you can rotate without nailing all over the wall! you can see pics of my studio at http://www.MySpace.com/RhondaGushee (I still absolutely love MySpace.com, by the way!) Thanks, Rhonda Gushee
Hi Alyson, my name’s Sofia Barao and I’m a mixed media artist living in France. I just discovered your site and blog and I find it very very helpful. I checked all your blog entries and there’s a question I still have as I’m now re-doing a new web site for my art : how to get email adresses for a mailing list ? Can I take emails from galleries and people (even from those who left me a message in my guestbook but that never subscribed my mailing list ?) from the internet ? or is this called SPAM too ? Don’t know if you can answer me to this, thanks you so much for all your precious advices, I’m looking for your new book is it already available ? I couldn’t see it in the web site. Thanks Sofia
Alyson, I have a long hallway where I like to display my paintings. I installed some slot board all along there. The is the kind of board you see sometimes in stores. Is has slots running the whole length of it. You just have to insert a hook and hang your painting. I can now move them around any time I want (which is often, as they come and go to shows, and so on). No more holes in the walls. It works great. It’s painted the same colour as the wall and does not interfere with the viewing of the paintings.