Opening Day

I dropped by the Wildflower Center shortly before closing time today, the show's opening day. My purpose was to upgrade the artist biographies that are included in the exhibit. Those printed-up by the Center turned-out to be sad black & white affairs, carelessly mounted on scrap foam core. I'm all for the recycling, but the quality of the results made it a wasted effort. So, Kathleen Marie printed and mounted the bios herself, I drove out to her studio near Johnson City to collect them, then returned home by way of the Wildflower Center to install them. The McDermott building was empty, so there was no trouble performing the unscheduled exhibit upgrade. (The headline "Artist arrested vandalizing own show" ran through my head more than once while considering this little errand.)

After the upgrade, I tried to stand back and see the exhibit the way a visitor might - but failed. Knowing those people and places, and especially my panoramas, which are something like frozen, idealized memories for me, I don't think I can possibly know what the exhibit will look like to anyone else. I can say that the lighting seemed good, and that the panoramas look a lot smaller on those big, 1883 carriage-house walls than they do on the modest, 1953 walls of my house. I straightened a few pictures, tidied up our business cards, read through the guest book, and slipped out as quietly as I'd come. It was nice to have seen a few familiar names in the guest book.

This evening, Margaret Bamberger called to ask about the exhibit, having returned home from the hospital late in the afternoon. The cancer treatment and aftermath sound like they were hell, but she's on the mend now, and all indications are that the results will be good, so, hopefully, she'll be back to a normal life in the not-too-distant future. It's not clear, however, whether she'll be feeling well enough to attend David's presentation at the Wildflower Center next Friday morning, and to join in the subsequent book-signing. By the way, she set me straight on the book signing. The text on the Wildflower Center's events page had led me to believe that Jeffrey Greene would be there to sign the book, but, in fact, it'll be the book's subject, David Bamberger, rather than its author, who will be doing the signing. That's understandable, given that Jeffrey lives in France, and the commute's a bitch.