Journal Update #15 - 12/5/19
I have definitely heard of the jokes about the paint thinner euphoria, but I would never see myself incredibly high on the monday night of dead week due to working on a school project. I spent four hours applying a thick coat of paint and subsequently wiping off the undesirable colored areas with mineral spirits. At the end of the session, all the boards seemed to look great as they were spinning around in my peripheral vision. Three header panels were there. I counted the nine quote boards which were dyed a light charcoal grey for better visibility. I was delighted to see that the surrounding oak wood was barely tinted from the stain, and I would deem this idea a success.
The library preservation technician and I decided to hang the boards up on Saturday December 7th. I assumed that making two trips from my fraternity house carrying twenty pounds of wood would not be an enjoyable experience, so driving was my next best option. I loaded all 13 wooden pieces in my SUV, and I was off to drive 2 minutes to the Arthur Lakes Library. After talking my way out of a parking ticket, I successfully transfered my display next to the wall where it would be hung. I then drove home and sprinted back to the library as I noticed that I was five minutes late to my appointment with Sherry. I arrived at the library to see her looking at the wooden panels with no apparent expression or emotion--was she disappointed in my work? When she saw me, she lit up and dawned a big smile, and I was incredibly relieved that she liked my soon-to-be exhibit. What followed next would be an exceptionally grueling task that I never expected to be a challenge in my practicum: hanging up the boards.
Without saying any words to each other, we both already agreed that I would be the one to do all of the grunt work in attaching the boards to the wall. I came armed with a balance, tape measure, ruler, and pencil, and she provided a gigantic ladder as well as a bag of hundreds of heavy duty command strips. I lugged all of the gear from her office in the basement of the building, and I got to work. As students would dodge the ladder that blocked half of the hallway to the computer commons, I spent nearly an hour marking up the wall with pencil dots and lines. I would never have expected the physical strain that hanging six-pound boards on a wall would require, and I found myself sweating profusely at the halfway mark. During the process, I noticed that many students would stop and read the quotes that were already displayed; this made me extremely excited that my work would actually receive attention. Two hours of the afternoon passed, and Sherry and I were painstakingly ensuring that each board was perfectly straight to the passerby. Rather than line up the panels in a vertical line, she had the wonderful idea of positioning them into a triangle formation to allow for more room as well as a better 'artistic style.' The library preservation technician was an enormous aid to my library endeavors as we had developed a rhythm in which she would peel and apply the command strips before handing them to me to stick on the wall. One of her friends, a construction worker for the library, even inquired about my project. I would never forget the moment that he asked if he could display a quote--I had not advertised such an idea yet, so he thought of it organically. I told him my intentions for making this a collaborative display, and we shared emails so we could get in touch in the future. After I shared my vision and practicum work with other passerbyers, I made last minute touch ups to each panel, wiping them down with a rag to remove dust and fingerprint smudges.
It's all done. Everything is finished. The pictures of my last practicum deliverable can be found under the 'deliverables' tab in this website blog. For those reading, I would like to thank you in following my journey to this moment, and I hope you would be able to eventually see my final display in person.