I'd been talking with a local business about the state of their walls for a few days. This needs some explanation; the business is called The Burrito Gallery- the idea being a Mexican restaurant where you can eat among great, local, curated art. I went in for a meal the other day and the 'gallery' was empty. In fact, it was more than empty, it was in disrepair from several shows which had hung there and not fixed their wall mess on the way out. What resulted were walls with holes all over them, and some hardware left hanging. It looked bad. I asked the owner what was going on with his walls and he said, "I don't know, I think an artist is flaking on me and I have no one to show in his place."
He recognized me as 'Thursto's friend' and asked if I could hang a show. I said absolutely. He said he needed a few days to confirm so I gave him my number. A few days later I got the call. He said, "Your Thursto connection really pulled through, you got the spot. Bring some big paintings etc. etc."
I saw many options of what to do from here. I agreed to help him out, definitely, but how I was not personally sure of. I went to the paint store at which the Burrito Gallery's account was filed and picked up a quart of paint and some patch supplies. I was reimbursed by the owner, Paul, upon arriving at the restaurant and began preparing (removing hardware, patching, sanding, dusting, painting) the walls to get ready for an install. His remark about big paintings I believe was an assumption on his part, and I at the time had no large-scale work, only modest-sized watercolor and gouache paintings. I saw an option to build panels that night and cram some paintings, but I didn't want to hang anything that I wasn't sure of (not to mention I already had what I saw as a successful show hanging for the same period at Brew). I thought if the math was right (spacing) the smaller works wouldn't look half bad in the space, but I kept it as a plan B. I thought my friend's work would look great in the space, as was echoed to me again by my friend Overstreet, Jeff Luque. After finishing the wall work at the restaurant and returning to CoRK, I offered the space to Jeff that night and he accepted! He was ready to install within the hour and we transported five of his large paintings to the restaurant and installed them before close. We ate free dinners compliments of Paul, and I hooked up the bar in back with a clean chalkboard sign-job. Big success! That night at CoRK I prepared more work for the Tickets show.
