Art Display Project | Gail Pomare

SO, you’re in for a feast for the creative soul today because my dear friend Gail Pomare is guest blogging!  I adore her for many things, including her ability to think outside the box, the way she balances humor and honesty, and her positive outlook on life.  All of those things are apparent in her photography.  And now that I’ve read through this post, I’ll add one more thing to the list.  I adore her plan to use sliding barn doors in her home!  It’s one of my life’s goals to have a sliding barn door in my home before I die.  (I bet ya didn’t know that about me!) 

Wendy, thanks for doing this amazing project, I know it’s been a lot of work for you but it has truly been magical to see how friends and colleagues display their own work in the own home. So fun and inspiring!

Photographs are my thing and always have been since I was a wee lass taping them to my closet doors. I love looking at photos, mine, other people’s, random art displays somewhere, exhibitions of prominent photographers, photography books. I totally dig it all. But when it comes to displaying my own images, well that’s a totally different story. I’ve always dreamed of owning a farmhouse with one wall covered in photos, mine and other people’s. I just love photos and find it hard to commit to BIG pieces. Therefore I tend to go more for small scale images, grouped for bigger impact.

Firstly I find myself wanting to explain this and that about our small house, telling you how much I hate our carpet and how I would love to replace it with dark hardwood floors, pointing out that I have no style, cringing over the boring walls – realizing what a mishmash we all are etc etc, but this morning I made sure I put on my big girl undies so I could nervously walk you through our home and just accept it for what it is. A shelter we’ve chosen to grow our family memories in. Let’s keep it real here. It ain’t perfect, but it’s home.

here goes….several months ago I got some of those circular cork boards with the primary coloured foam on the back on sale, they were only 50 cents each so I bought 9, spray painted them black and hung them. I just like to hang bits and bobs up there, this current set are images from our recent road trip to SO Cal, The Grand Canyon and Phoenix. I order 12×12 prints and trace one of the circles around on the back of the image, in pencil and cut it out. Very no frills but easily changeable….and adds a small hint of personal art in our house (and er,these images may or may not be thumb tacked to the cork boards lol).

In the family room I’ve mixed up some framed prints, with a standout of Mac, and a frame with a larger matte. I like to kind of mix it up a little and I also like the versatility of frames – makes it easier to change out the images at will. And yes, our Christmas decorations are still up. (shameful face) (see that pile of frames on the floor…that’s my to do list pile right there lol)

 

The Stairs

I am {slowly} creating a photo wall up our stairs. I am really wanting it to be a wall of just black and whites. {it is a work in progress – as you can see I don’t have many bw’s in there lol} I started it by collecting all the odd frames from around the house and garage, spray painted them all black then used the command picture hanger system (NO NAILS) to hang them in various positions. One thing I love about the command picture hangers is that they are easily moved if you want to change spots or add/remove frames. And they are very simple to apply. Try ’em, you’ll like ’em. (pst, they even have ones for posters so you don’t need to rock the thumb tack if you don’t want to – just sayin’). I added in a gallery wrap canvas at the very top of the arch instead of a framed print because I didn’t want a big frame to fall on anyone’s head and break glass all over them lol. (yes, I really do think like that)

 

I’ve also used photographs on the round markers for who is doing what job on our family home evening chart. I made this last year at a church activity, the instructions were to hand write names on, but being the photo girl that I am, it was obvious I would put images. I started with BW, but then decided it should have been colour….as you can see, another project not quite finished yet.

 

 

We have a tiny living room, although it does have double height ceilings. To keep the wall art in scale (75% of the wall space) with decorating norms a single print would be pretty hard for my camera resolution therefore I opted for 9 10×20 float wraps. I really like float wraps/mounts, I like the clean streamline, uncluttered look of them. They float my boat (‘scuse the pun) I ordered these from WHCC and Black River Imaging – which I am having a lustful affair with. (so many products on my – ‘must have’ list) and I LOVE the quality of them. I may add another row at the top as funds permit, or I may just space them further apart, or I may just take it all down and put them somewhere else and then get 3/ 30×40 verticals instead, still deciding on that one. Again these were attached using the command picture hanging system.

 

The opposite wall to this one is my problem area, which is somewhat frustrating because it’s the first wall inside the front door. Right now it looks like this…. it has one 20×30 gallery wrap canvas of Mike swinging Mac around at Bad Water, Death Valley…and a canvas painting of Kapiti Island my sister created for us. I THINK I want to do a sunset series of 20 x30 canvas wraps here… but I’m not sure. It’s a big wall and needs a big art installment.

Projects for 2012.

There are still projects in the wings and I think that is the way my life will always be. Mike and I are making a killer creative wall display for our bedroom involving barn door fixtures, it’s taking longer than anticipated to source the right fixtures but will be sooooooooo worth it. This is the wall now…. but I want to create a sliding barn door type set up, with a flat track and iron door fixtures. I wont use actual sliding barn doors, just ply or masonite that I will paint a fun colour. The objective is to have 2 panels that will slide over the windows to provide privacy at night and then slide back into the middle of the wall to create an art piece during the day. I’m thinking – 16 12×12 images in all (so 2 columns of 4 on each) and will probably do BW’s for these. Since Mike is an amazing landscape photographer I want him to contribute some work to this project too. I think it will look kind of cool once completed. fingers crossed.

and then there are these to get done. I want to cover that old trunk with some of our travel photos | put some images in that old window frame, then hang the frame | and then…. that dreaded wall.

Plus I am working my way through creating a book of my 2011 Project 52 images this month since it’s downtime for me. I really want to get this finished and sent off to the printer asap. This is super important to me to have tangible (and easily transportable archives for my kids).

I was talking to Mike some time ago about what if I was to die, what would happen to my hard drives full of photos? Who would see them? Would my kids want their own hard drives full of my photos? I very much doubt it. And so this year is going to be more about cleaning out, and making sense of the massive amount of archived images that I already have, so that my children will have a way of having them that is more logical and wont require their own small castle in which to house them. I’m thankful for the chance to capture and collate images that I enjoy, that represent us as a family and the time we have together building our memories.

Do me a favour…as a woman without photos of my father/parents…get in your images and get them on the walls. aroha.

Thanks, Gail!