A place for everything and everything in its place

Would you believe a crate this small contains over 150 framed prints, four sculptures with plinths, several tools, and weighs over 200 kilograms? Everything is tightly packed inside with no room to spare in order to keep all the objects inside from jiggling around and breaking while in transit, and to help keep shipping costs down.

But it takes a master packer to pull it off. Matt designed the packing job so that many of the objects nest inside of each other, and carefully numbered and documented each stage of the packing so that (hopefully!) we can get all the works back inside when it’s time to come home again this fall. In case you were wondering where he got his packing skills, Matt is an avid Tetris fan, and has been organizing the trunk of the family car for road trips since he was a kid.

Between building and packing the crate, creating the packing manifest, dealing with insurance and export details, securing permission to borrow some of the artwork that had already been sold to clients, and coordinating pickups and deliveries all along the way, just getting the artwork ready for shipping feels like a production in and of itself.

You can imagine our relief when the art handlers, Museum Pros, picked up the crate earlier this week to take it to the export warehouse … we’ve been working towards this day for months and It feels like a major milestone achieved!

And it also feels more real now. This was also the week we heard back from the Canada Council for the Arts that they are supporting us with travel grants, as well as the good folks at McMaster Museum of Art who just confirmed their recommendation to the Ontario Arts Council to fund us for exhibition assistance. After eight months of planning, things are really starting to come together.

Next our focus will turn to finishing the catalogue, preparing for the artist talks and lecture, and most importantly, wrapping up the final details on our new work with EP for the gallery show and outdoor public art commission.

More blog posts on the new work to follow soon.

Looking forward to seeing you in Edinburgh!

Hallie & Matt