Display

I’m always looking for creative and easy ways to display 2D art. For many years, above my computer I’ve had multiple magnet boards to hold art cards, postcards, tickets, receipts… any little bits and pieces I wanted to see regularly or keep handy. Every so often I would clear off the magnet board and start with a clean slate, but most of the time it was a messy mismash of stuff. Kinda like life, huh?

Over Spring Break we stayed with some family in Washington, DC, and our cousin Kate, an artist herself, had an awesome solution for displaying 2D art. After arriving home I found myself looking askance at my messy magnet boards, dreaming of a solution like hers. So I emailed for the scoop on how she did it, and was extremely pleased to find out that all I needed was a trip to IKEA!

I bought two sets of the DIGNITET wire hangers, along with the RIKTIG hanging clips. The primary purpose for these items is hanging curtains so you’ll find them in the drapery section. It was approximately $30 total for two sets. It’s a perfect way to cleanly display a lot of paper items, especially POSTCARDS, don’t you think? It would work great for photographs as well, and I think our holiday cards will have a new place for display this year.

Right now, it just feels nice to not have all of the magnet board clutter hovering above me at my keyboard. My husband told me it looked waaaay too neat for my studio. I’m not quite sure how to take that comment. 🙂

Next, I just need to clean off my desk. But that’s a project for another day…

From photons to pixels to print – same day. One of the things I love about being able to print my own work is that I can, almost real time, print the work I am creating. Often I create something and love it so much I just want to enjoy it off of the computer. Or, I tried something new and I want to see how it translates to paper. I want to hold it in my hands, feel as well as see the texture. I can do that now that I have a printer.

A couple of months ago, I started a weekly “print practice.” My goal is to print one or two pieces a week, to get better at editing for print. Get a feel for the effects of different papers and really learn this part off the process. I’ve stuck with it most weeks, and I’m definitely I improving. I really love my prints.

The problem became how to display them. I thought about my magnet boards, but they are really not big enough to hold multiple large prints. I have a bunch of old frames in the garage, but they would need some repainting to match my studio and they are standard sizes. I would either have to start printing standard sizes or get mats. The thought of changing things out of mats and frames all of the time wasn’t appealing either.

So it was synchronicity last week that when I finally put away my painting easel and created some free wall space, I ran across these magnetic photo ropes on Photojojo. I bought three in red, on a whim, hoping they would work in the newly empty space.

They are awesome! I can print and hang within seconds, easily changing images out. Each rope comes with eight super strong magnets, which work great even for the heavy fine art papers I’m using. It’s still a clean, uncluttered look, even with many images on display.

Now when I sit in my comfy chair, this is my view. Nice view, huh?

I’m already learning a lot. It’s interesting to see how some images, loved in the moment, quickly fade away and I want to replace them. Others last longer. Some images don’t translate well from screen to paper, or need a little more work to translate well. After looking at them in different light I can see how I might need to adjust them. I’ve already changed up what’s displayed here several times in the last few days. It looks different this morning than it did when I took these images on Saturday.

In David duChemin’s workshop he encouraged us to “live with our work.” I understand why. We are more picky, we improve, when we have to look at it every day. How do you display your work?

Creative Display

Living with my Work

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