Organized and Driven

The gallery was all abuzz with activity yesterday. Randy is still painting, but making great progress. The main room is finished, the counter area is 90 percent finished, which leaves only the my office, the hallway, restroom and kitchen. All of which he says he’ll knock out today.

Aga, who cleans our house, is coming to the gallery today to tackle the workroom, since we aren’t painting it. It needs a very thorough ceiling to floor cleaning since that is where we will store new product, Doug may frame paintings, we’ll put prints and mattes together, etc. Thursday I’ll have the carpets cleaned and then we can start moving things in. Yesterday we also got our phone, internet and alarm service set up.

Today I will tackle the decisions on the lighting, and try once again to get ahold of the sign company, who is the only cog in the wheel, since they aren’t returning any phone calls and were the ones who did the sign originally.

A couple of artists stopped by yesterday for us to review their work. Two were solicited by us, the other wasn’t. The second artist was a painter, and I have to say I didn’t care for his work, but was completely out of my element in reviewing it and responding. Doug gave me some directives as to what to do, but I pushed him to come and help me. He was great. He took right over, properly reviewed the work, ask appropriate questions and then wrapped it up by saying we’d keep his materials and photos of his work on file for future reference.

With the two that were solicited, he did equally well in his review. He is much more of an art critic than I am and that is how it should be. I know immediately if I think something is appropriate for the gallery and whether I think it will sell or not. But when you get down to how the artist will grow while at the gallery, what there goals for their art are, directions they plan to go in, what further training they’re getting or learning they’re doing . . . along with what their original training has been and how they’ve expanded it through the years, their approach, etc. Doug was brilliant. I was sincerely proud and in a little bit of awe of him.

When we were talking with the third and final artist, Doug talked about me a little bit. He told her that I was very, very organized, and very driven. Both good things, except when what you’d really like to do is just sit in a lawn chair and relax. Ummm, okay. I guess that was a compliment and a reminder at the same time.

I suppose I’ve always been an “as-soon-as-I girl.” As soon as I finish this or that I’ll relax. Gotta work on that.