First day setting up for SOFA WEST. Where are we?

When in doubt, read the instructions: “This is not London, this is Santa Fe”.

But the story’s the same: Unpack, touch up paint, debate artwork placement, place art, debate height, re-place art, touch up more paint, run to hardware store, try to pay with credit card, run back to get cash, return to hardware store, get paint roller, repaint pedestals, set more art, adhere signage, store crating, vacuum neighbors peanuts off our carpet…… forget to eat lunch, ache, whine,  squeal with delight (free WiFi access), yabber with other exhibitors…

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Seems like yesterday that we packed up from COLLECT in London. Woke up this morning in Santa Fe. We’re here for SOFA WEST, the newest addition to Mark Lyman’s lineup of always (she writes with great expectations) brilliant expositions of Sculpture, Objects & Functional Art.

It’s 6:30 am. My gallery team is still asleep. For now it’s just me, my laptop and a cup of steaming hot lemon ginger tea.

In a couple of hours we’ll reconnect with our DeWalt drills and start set-up down at the unconventional convention center.

Once the work is done, the artists arrive. 

For me, for now, it’s just a little morning bliss before the storm.

The hours between the end of COLLECT and the trip back to Portland for our biennial conference, BECon, seemed a good time to link the two with a visit to conference presenter Heike Brachlow at  London’s Royal College of Art.

The RCA sits just opposite Hyde Park, not far from the little mews house that we’d rented for our time in London. So it was a short walk and a good way to stretch out after days of standing at the fair.

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As often happens, the end of anything is the moment when we ask ourselves “why”.

COLLECT closed late Sunday afternoon. It had been a day filled mostly with artists, students, and families with small children. Buyers were few and exhaustion was setting in. The big pack-up lay ahead.

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It’s the last day of COLLECT. Can’t leave with a pic of us all in a heap on the floor (and what a grand floor it was! Thank you, Dinesen)….

Out of his worker’s grubbies, Dan – and the rest of us – stepped into an opening evening like I’ve never experienced. For a few hours the Crafts Council let us pretend we lived in Charles Saatchi’s world. It was quite over-the-top.

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