Unpacking
We got our quilts back from the MAQS where they had been displayed in the exhibition “On a Grand Scale”, a dialogue exhibition with works of Florida based artist Eleanor McCain. They returned in the same two robust boxes in which we had sent them, so there was a little touch of déjà vu already when the FedEx man stepped out of the lift with the boxes on his sack truck and approached our front door.
But the interesting part did not begin before the boxes got opened and I (yes. I did the logistics) took the quilts out for inspection and storage. The interesting part is this defile of works after they have been away for a while as they pass through my hands, the unfolding of them and instant recognition of the piece.
This familiarity with each of them must of course be unique for Inge and me, since they were created by our minds and hands, and it is incredible how fast the eyes track details and the brain recall how these details were deliberated over beforehand and sometime the problems of creating them as we had envisaged.
Some days later 3 boxes arrived from Houston, bringing back the 2 of the 7 works we had exhibited in the various exhibitions at Quilt Festival (the remainder 5 are all going on tours) plus one that had finished its touring. It is only a couple of weeks ago since we last saw the two most recently exhibited so they were rather fresh in mind. But what the unpacking of these boxes brought instead was the instant recollection of many of the conversations we had with viewers in front of our works while they were on display in Houston.
I consider this a very nice and rich experience which complements the interesting aspects of unpacking.
“But Steen”, you may say “You did not make it to MAQS and hence did not have such conversations with the visitors to the dialogue exhibition there. So did you miss this nice and rich experience of recalling conversations with visitors there?”
Yes, I am missing them and would very much have liked being there. But you know what? The curator at MAQS, Judy Schwender has compensated this by sending us a splendid photographic coverage of the entire exhibition, and slide-showing the images gives a very good impression of the whole set up and a good idea of how it must have been walking around in the exhibition area.