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March 25, 2008

installing

I went to the Museum and installed my work this afternoon after a hellish few days of toil and setbacks. I had problems with the images for my books and so wound up spending countless hours Sunday and Monday printing them a different way, and stabbing and sewing spines late into the night. But the installation at least went smoothly: I had lots of help, nothing got broken and I only found one extra page that had somehow snuck into one of the books by mistake (I sheepishly glanced around to make sure the museum security staff weren't looking before slowly, carefully tearing out the page, as if the works presence in the Museum should prevent me from altering it anymore. I couldn't very well leave it in, it was right at the front).

Some photos from the installation in progress (keep in mind it's not yet properly lit):

You can see that the original plan for hanging the prints was completely scrapped. I like this much better now that it's hung; it's simple and elegant and I think they look pretty damned good. Obviously the bits of paper won't stay, they're only there because the ends of the wood pieces were painted after the prints were already nailed in.

Each dress has a tag containing the dates worn and reason for withdrawal, and a book containing images of each state of the dress (each image again stamped with its corresponding date). The books are a simple stab binding with thin, flexible covers; after changing my mind a couple of times about the binding, I decided that the Chinese account-book structure would best reflect these acts of collecting, arranging, cataloguing, and list-making that have been present throughout the project. The tags were initially going to be attached to the dresses, but ended up attached to the drawers instead because each dress is folded differently inside the drawer. I like the look of the tag and book side-by-each much better than my original plan of the book sitting alone in that large space. Everything in its place but also every space filled.

There was lots of talk about whether or not it's okay for visitors to touch the dresses, as there will be a wall text inviting them to explore the drawers and look at the books but to please not remove the dresses. I don't really mind people touching them, because clothing is meant to be touched, but I don't want them messed up and placed back imperfectly folded. I guess we'll have to wait and see, and if necessary I'll walk over there every few days and check on the piece, making sure the books and dresses are all in their proper places.

Stacie asked in the comments yesterday if I'm sad. I am, a little, but not because this project is ending. I think I'm definitely ready to move on to a new body of work, although there will certainly be resonances of this project in my work for a while. I was digging through my print drawers this afternoon looking for things to show at the open portfolio session of the Southern Graphics Council conference this week, and all of the many, many prints I had to choose from contain the residue of these dresses. I wish I still had some dresses to print from, and I'm glad I'll at least have the one more dress to make (the one for opening night) so that I can catch a few more of those fleeting dress impressions.

I do feel at a loss for what to wear. Today I wore one of the skirts from way back when the project began, with a t-shirt, and it felt really strange to be wearing a t-shirt with nothing over top of it. I sort of felt like my belly was too visible.

I'm still working on a big pile of prints that are all tied up in the Wardrobe Project, and am going allow myself some time just to work through finishing up some of that, taking as much time as I need to work this project out of my system while I think about what I might like to do next. I do think that my next big project will be less about clothes and more about the categorizing and listing side, the establishment of rules and routines. But, who knows. Some days I think that I'd be perfectly happy just making and selling clothes for a while and not worrying about embarking on any more big research-based projects for a while. In the meantime, though, does anyone know where I could get one of those old factory time-punch-card machines?

Posted by jodi at March 25, 2008 07:54 PM | categories:  exhibition

Comments

Posted by: elabeth at March 25, 2008 11:25 PM

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Posted by: A.N.W. at April 20, 2008 02:20 PM