Back to White

5:00pm. Sunday evening at Art Produce, just before taking the show down and starting to paint the wall back to white, I took some pictures of the show at night (I did not get the chance to do it quietly before).

Then I packed the prints, the inks, the TV, removed the nails, filled the holes, put plastic sheets on the floor. I started applying the primer.

Lori brought me a nice tool to sand the wall quickly and a roll of tape + paper that she magically applied all along the walls in a few minutes! That was a great help. And although she was nicely dressed, she rolled some paint on the wall. After that, Claudia arrived and we worked until 10:30. I loaded the car with the prints, the inks, the empty cans of paints, we closed the gallery and we left.















Monday. A coat of off-white everywhere, working on the details. Scraping the letters on the window. Spent the day with Claudia. We were done at 5:00 - we had no more paint (and the store was closed).



Tuesday. Went to the gallery, checked the window for the glue left by the letters, it was OK. Bought a gallon of Yolo paint at Olive Branch Green Building Supply in North Park for the gallery's walls, where Lynn buys it. The price is the same as a gallon of Mythic, the non toxic paint I usually use. But it is nice that Lynn buys her paint in this local store!

Back to the gallery, I painted another coat to be sure everything looked fine. Then I loaded the car with all the paint material, the ladder, the display table (heavy!), the camera, the tripod, the trash, the sand (from the display table), the plastic sheets.

I had the nice surprise to see Anna Stump, we had a cafe together and talk about possible future projects. Very interesting as usual, I love her energy and determination!

At 12:30 I was done and tired. I decided to have lunch at Cafe Carpe Diem and I got a really nice "Farmers Daughter Panini", fresh and yummy. Just the time to see Lynn and I was off to get the kids at school, with a stop at home on the way, to unload the car and put the seats back.



1:00pm. Wow, it is all gone!

I am kind of sad, it was somehow difficult to let it go. Because the mural is gone for good, the letters on the window too.

On the other hand, the bigger "thing" I keep is the display table, which is an old table that I recycled for the show, 7 prints, and a series of 6"x6" inks. So in the end it does not take too much space, which is good.

It was the same at the SDAI for my the last show, "C'est la Vie". At the end of the show the mural was gone and I only had a box with small paintings to store.

Also, the paint I use is eco-friendly for the most part (so far only the primer I uses is not very good but I've got a nice sample of Yolo primer at Olive Branch to try). I am thinking about all this. It is important.

When I see all the large paintings I've made the past 5 years, they are in my garage and they stay there. They take a lot of space.

Sometimes I envy the writers: they only need a laptop and they have all their writing on a disk. If they publish a book, it can even be read on a computer without producing too much carbon footprint!



Olive Branch Green Building Supply
"Energy-efficient and healthy building materials"
3030 North Park Way
San Diego, CA 92104 619-237-1234