Closed on the Maysville Building and now the work begins!

So, the show got delivered and is in safe keeping. The campus art committee is going to decide where they should be hung. It's going to be very special.

On another note, while waiting to close on the Maysville building, I spent part of the week cutting and assembling the mats for Joel Sartore's show in the Third Floor gallery. The prints look great in the mats and I even got the labels done.

I also made a website for FotoFocus for the Regional Student Show they are sponsoring. That was more work than it should have been if the committee there had their act together and gave me text, images, date and links on time. I know they are up to their eyeballs but I was flying by the seat of my pants and I could have just done the entire thing in a day or so and instead it took 2 weeks. But now it's done and up online and students can submit their work for the show.

So, we closed on the Maysville building yesterday and that was also more trouble than it should have been because the sellers were divorced and the ex-wife was still very very angry and unable to function in a reasonable manner most of the time. Everything needed to be brought to a battle and then when the fight was over and the blood cleaned up, a small decision was made. The poor realty agent and her closing lawyer got ears full as did the bank folks. Luckily she lives way far away in California and won't be in Maysville hopefully ever. We can go about our business like hard working reasonable people and get the place put back in order. The tenants left a bunch of shit over the years, some in the basement and some in the stairway and some in what used to be the joint garbage collection place. And when people move out of apartments, they do not clean their ovens, stoves, refrigerators, showers, sinks, toilets floors or cabinets. It's gross and while waiting the first Friday celebration that we are doing, we will begin to clean the personal gross leftovers in the bathrooms and kitchens. I cannot use them unless I disinfect them completely so I went to the store and bought a boatload of cleaners today. All are anti-bacterial because I was so grossed out.

I never considered myself a germ-a-phobic but there is something about someone's personal debris that gets to me. I bought gloves that are good enough for science experiments and brushes and sprays and scrapers.

So, tomorrow, Keith and I want to have a slide show in the front window during the gallery hop in case anyone actually comes way down there. We are showing a small group of images from India. We also have some left over banners from the Krohn's butterfly show that they made of our images a few years back. We also have some signage to put in the windows letting folks know what is happening in the space.

We ran into a former student of our department at the post office. Katrina lives in Maysville and was surprised to see us. She will be an enthusiastic supporter of our efforts in town. There are so many people who have been generous, warming and welcoming to us there. It feels great. We probably will spend time over at EAT with Lori and Simon tomorrow. They have been the best.

I will take and upload some images from tomorrow night soon.

Meanwhile the garden is producing like crazy and we are going to be in big trouble.....

That is all I know now.

FotoFocus show and banners arrive tomorrow.

Darlene is bringing the show and banners in the truck over to school tomorrow to unload. Today, the guy from Look3 is driving up from Charlottesville with it all loaded up. Keith, Matt, David and I will be there to get it up into the gallery. It's drizzling out now and I hope that clears up for tomorrow's unload.

Sartore exhibition image

I got the mat board also today over at Frame King and will begin to cut mats tomorrow afternoon. I have to do all of Joel Sartore's show. I know it will look wonderful because his prints are quite nice. Then Matt and I are going to print the big one for the show after school begins and not long before we have to hang it so it doesn't get dinged.

I will be so happy when it is all up and ready to be enjoyed. It's been such a long time coming and it will be up for only a month. I hope the campus receives it well. We have students working right now on research for the summer about the show to act as docents when school children come to see both shows. They are Kirsten Schwarz' students from Environmental Sciences and Biology. The photo students who are interested are going to meet with these women and explain the photographic significance of the work.

Tonight we shift gears and go to the unveiling of the first CSA portfolio from the Carnegie. That ought to be fun and I am anxious to see what the work looks like from the other artists. I will try to save up some money to buy the next one.

The building still is not ours. The closing might be this next week. Just waiting on the paperwork to make its way back to Maysville to transfer the ownership. Joyce and Tim looked at it last week when they stopped on their way back home. I think they liked it. I know when it is fixed up, they will. Lori from Eat has already created a group of people to actively create some interest in the First Fridays art hops. We will hang some signs in our windows to let anyone who goes by what is about to happen there. I am hoping to earn some money after retirement by creating websites and doing fine ink jet printing. We will have a bit of overhead to cover each month but it won't be too much. Still lots to do before we can open up after the purchase.

MRI on my knee on Thursday next week. That should tell the tale on the lingering pain. I really need my knee to be healthy for all that is coming up.

The garden continues to produce tons of veggies. We are eating healthy food these days.

Turned in my papers to retire from teaching

It will be 41 years teaching photography to undergraduate students when I smile and walk out the door in May. I turned in the paperwork yesterday to both Thom and the new dean Katherine and asked for Emeritus Status and to begin a search to replace me as soon as school begins in August.

I have no regrets, no hesitations and in fact, it makes me feel good to know I did a good job, gave my students my best and can continue to have a place in their lives as colleagues and friends as they go forward.

We are buying a building in Maysville in the historic downtown at the corner of 2nd and Sutton. It is an Italianate building from about 1860, three stories and across from EAT gallery. The building is in pretty good shape for its age, but we will do some work on it. There are two apartments upstairs and both need some updating and rearranging. The top floor has a view of the river which is two short blocks behind it to the north. The storefront will hold our photo gallery and our studios. While not big, it is the right size project for us and will be our retirement project giving us a new way to spend our time.

We have applied for a grant to fix the facade and above is the way we envision it looking. We will be finding out about the grant next week. It will give us a max of $5000 for the project. Prices in Maysville for work is reasonable compared to our local prices in the Cincinnati so that money will go a long way to replacing the single pane windows with double pane, repainting the facade and windows and the top. 

The inside looks like this right now in what will be the gallery space and my studio. Keith's will be behind me in another room. It has a beautiful tin ceiling which we will paint a dark grey matt surface. The walls will be a gallery white, the floors will be refinished. There will be moveable gallery walls down the center and dividing the space from my studio area. My plan is to have a 44" epson printer in my space with computers, my large photo library, print drawers and work tables. I hope to spend time working on my own images, making websites and printing fine art work for other photographers for exhibitions or portfolios. 

In the gallery, we will show the work of under represented or emerging photographers. While there might not be a huge financial incentive to open a gallery, for us, it will be a labor of love and service to the field. However, we do hope to sell the work we show to aid the photographers who loan us their work for our space. The gallery is going to be called 2See. 

The summer is moving very fast. I am really wanting it to slow down so I can savor this last summer  before my last year. 

Next week I have to begin to mat the work of Joel Sartore for the show in October and I begin physical therapy for my knee, get my car worked on and maybe begin to work with Anita Douthat to make her website. The following week, Joyce and Tim come, we close on the building, and we have the unveiling of the CSA portfolio at the Carnegie. I think the banners also arrive from Charlottesville by way of our kind Darlene Anderson, the sponsor for our Nat Geo show in Oct.