I hung my work today at the Chase Center in Wilmington, DE where the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen is having our first State Show of the year. I’m set up in the lobby in a well lit location so you can easily find me on your way in and out.
I have a corner space which means I can hang a larger selection of work. I always have more work than I can hang and so decisions must be made as to which images make it onto the wall and which do not. The decision is based on a kind of survival of the fittest through a somewhat natural selection process.
The first work that goes on the wall is that which is most popular, i.e., most often selected by patrons for purchase. The work that is less popular (less fit?) gets hung when space allows. Ultimately, if a piece is not selected for too long, it may not even make it to a show – it goes extinct. I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with these images that are not selected, they may just be in the wrong place to be selected for someone’s home or office. Maybe someone somewhere else would have selected the image, but not at the shows I’m currently doing. Geographically, where an image hangs on display is a selective force in determining if an image is added to someones home/office. Likewise, you won’t find a polar bear in a desert.
I am a pretty good judge of image quality, so I’m confident that non-selected images are good, they’re just not often purchased. I have several images for sale that are not the most popular but which when found by the right person, are taken with excitement. I will sometimes hang images that are not my most popular because I think they say something important about the breadth of work I do (these are often my more abstract pieces). There are also certain pieces that just turn me on and which will always find a place in my show display (artificial selection?).
I have about 20 pieces hanging at the Chase Center now, so make it to the show and put your natural selection to work. Over time you will see how my display evolves.
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