Last week I helped Barb Macks set up the group book show she organized for the Santa Fe Book Arts Group at the AMS Community Art Gallery in Rowe NM. The gallery has only shown paintings and prints up until now, so there weren’t any pedestals or vitrines, but Barb came up with several interesting and inexpensive ways to outfit the gallery space.
One wall had a step out at the ceiling. She went to the local Joanns to get the cast off cardboard inserts in their fabric bolts, covered them in white paper, then used rope to suspend them from the ceiling. The inserts are light weight and it’s easy to put the holes in the ends to insert the rope—no special equipment required. We leveled the shelves and then used putty and double-stick foam tape to anchor the shelves to the wall so that they would stay put.
For the handmade paper by Suzanne Villmain, she pounded nails flush into the wall then attached the paper to them using magnets.
One long wall had a step out at the bottom. Barb collected old handback books from the free bins outside several book stores here in town. She covered more fabric bolt inserts with butcher paper to use as shelves. In the supplies from previous exhibits, she found a stash of black plastic open-ended boxes. These she stacked, weighting them with the hardbacks, and put a shelf on top. Here’s one as we set it up and then with the books displayed.
