Gust post by Iris's mama

Today Iris and I started talking about having an art opening to display her artwork for her friends and family. She is an incredibly prolific and talented artist, so this should be a really fun way to take it to that next level. Maybe we can start doing one a year or something? Anyways, that's jumping the gun, first we need to figure out how to do the very first one.

So far we only know this: we need to let everyone know about the art show and serve people food and drink while they are there.The rest I'm not so sure about.

I had started getting all of these grand ideas in my head and was telling Iris's teacher about it, drawing on my experiences of having attended many openings when my brother, a painter, had openings I was able to attend in Milwaukee. Iris's incredibly smart teacher's response was that maybe I could ask Iris how she would like her art to be displayed. Uh, yeah. Clearly I was making it too much about my expectations. I need to follow Iris's expectations, instead.But anyways, we don't live in an art gallery. We live in an apartment. How could we even display artwork here for public viewing? We do have several white walls, but exposing them would require a rearrangement of our furniture. I also thought about stringing clothesline across the room and hanging the artwork from it. I definitely want to make sure the art is arranged and visible to people. One of Iris's suggestions was having a place for people to do their own art when the opening, which we would need to find a place for. Of course, there is the whole matter of us trying to move out of our apartment sooner rather than later! Would the opening be here or in a new place?

I also don't know much about what to do with the piles of papers Iris has amassed. Should I try to mount or frame them? If so, how exactly? Yikes. There is alot to figure out! Maybe we'll aim for an April show. That will give us time to get it all put together.