A shady deal?

It has been a while since my last blog entry, mainly because I was extremely busy preparing the upcoming show of Rebecca Crowell's work in my gallery (Polderland Gallery).

The show will open next Friday, April 20, and runs through May 19.

First there were the press kits to get ready, then the invitations and posters - and getting them out of course and then the famous one thing leads to another projects. After running a gallery in part of my studio for about two years I felt I could use some help in marketing the gallery, and asked help from the talented Linsey Sieger. As an 'artist run' gallery I have to do without an advertising budget and I asked her for some ideas on how to get the name out. One of her suggestions was to change the name from MB Gallery into something that would resound my being Dutch and that is how I came up with Polderland Gallery. There is probably nothing more uniquely Dutch as a polder, a piece of land won on the water by putting up a dike and then milling the land dry. The new land is consequently below the water level. This is how the former Zuiderzee (South Sea) became the location for towns such as Emmeloord and Almere and what was left of the former Zuiderzee now is Ijsselmeer (Ijssellake). When thinking of polderland I see a (very) flat landscape with a big sky in my minds eye.

Having decided on the new name I needed to remove the slightly oriental looking red logo from my black door - painted the door gray (we have a lot of overcast in Holland) and ordered new signs. Now... a gray door would definetely look better against a shiny black floor I felt. Although I've always loved the look of the old wood floors in my studio, the gallery part of the floor had a strange broad strip of some tar like filler on it and made that part look narrower as it was. For a long time I had been toying with the idea of a black floor and one of the first things that triggered it was my visit many years ago, to the studio's in the 'Wilhelmina Gasthuis' in Amsterdam, an old hospital turned studio/living spaces for artists, where one of the studio's I visited had this beautiful black floor, actually everything in this studio was white, black or gray, and it made such an impression on me that I promised myself that if I'd ever have an old wood floor in my studio I would paint it black. So here you have it, many hours on hands and knees later my wish became reality!

Then Rebecca's work had to get here too of course, so that was the next project to tackle. As she lives on the other side of the state we agreed to meet halfway in Madison and trade loads. It was a bit like on of those shady parking lot deals, you know: the kind that cannot bear the light of day, but fortunately the sun was out brightly so we did not attract any suspicion at all.

By now the paintings are all unpacked, unveiling their superior beauty, the first five already on the wall, many more to go - I've got my work cut out for me till Friday 9.30 pm!

PS Professional packing is an art in itself, see photograph on top on the creative use of spacers!