Project Manager

Today Aly and I were the "project managers" for exhibit installation. It was kind of hard because there are so many loose ends that need to be tied up, and trying to figure out where everyone needed to go and what they needed to do was quite a trick, but we all survived and got everything done that we had hoped to do. The biggest relief was that I was able to have the missing photos reprinted today so that now we have all of the artwork for the exhibit. We even started hanging some of the art in the Brainard Gallery this afternoon. I never thought I'd say this, but it actually looks pretty cool in there. Maybe we can pull this off--maybe. We'll find out tomorrow if we can actually get everything done :-) We'll be starting bright and early at 8:00 a.m. It will surely be a long day, but the great thing is that I don't have to be a project manager anymore!! Dr. Rugh will be rolling into town tomorrow evening, so that will be great fun!

This morning was a little crazy, but then I had a very fun lunch with Greg and his mom. They came and picked me up at the Tarble Arts Center (aka the "Terrible" Arts Center) and brought my favorite kind of Jimmy John's sandwich for me, then we went and had a picnic outside because it was a beautiful day. They are so nice! Greg also brought me some beautiful flowers and a very nice gift. It was a wonderful break in the day! When I went back to work after lunch, I was in a really good mood, and I think everyone wondered what had happened to me :-)

This afternoon we ended our exhibit installation work early so that we could all go home and change into our nice clothes for the Graduate School Awards Ceremony today. It was a bigger deal than I thought, and all of the professors and everyone was there. It was a pretty big crowd, and all of us got recognized for our work on the Dudley project, so that was cool. The ceremony was a little bit boring though. The best part was that they served these awesome brownies with Reese's Pieces on top--yummy! Then I ran some errands, did some laundry, did more laundry (I've needed to catch up), vacuumed, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and now I'm heading off to bed.

A Day at the Zoo

Today we hosted an open house as part of the 2008 Graduate Student Expo, so people got to come over to the Tarble Arts Center and see us in our "natural environment." We totally felt like monkeys at the zoo--and probably looked like monkeys at the zoo too! Here you can see some pictures of the E-gallery, one of two galleries in which we will be displaying objects. The E-gallery is the kind of "fun" gallery with things people can touch and $50 wicker chairs they can sit in. That's where the train car is. You can see the train car there along the back wall of the gallery. It is really just a series of three "rooms" (which we added dividers to later this afternoon), where visitors can learn about people's perceptions of travel based on status, race, social class, etc. It will look a lot better when we're done with it, but I still think it's stupid :-) It would be cooler if it actually looked like the outside of a train car, but it's just an interior facade. In the photos you can also see the big signs we're hanging from the ceiling. At first I thought it would look really dorky, but it is actually looking pretty cool. Angie took the last two of those pictures from up in the rafters as she was installing the signs. You can see Aly and me busily matting and framing some photos. (Aly seemed a lot happier today than yesterday, which was good.)

It will be in the other gallery, the Brainard Gallery, where we will have more of the fine art pieces. We had to design a part of the exhibit to be more "kid-friendly" because EIU has a program with all of the 5th grade classes in the area, where they bring their students to see the HA exhibit each spring. So that's why the E-gallery will be more interactive than the Brainard. We ran into a few problems today, but the most serious was that there are six photographs we're supposed to have framed that are mysteriously missing! Laurie and I will try to track those down tomorrow, but I'm afraid we're going to have to have them reprinted. Dan was supposed to have had all of the photos printed, so it appears that he kind of dropped the ball on this one. Hopefully we can get this resolved quickly.

Today was totally crazy! We were running all over the place all day. Then, this evening I was interviewed by the Daily Eastern campus newspaper. They requested an interview with me, Dan, and Mr. Riccio to talk about the exhibit and the HA program (supposedly they just chose our three names off of a list). It was pretty cool to be interviewed for the paper. It's always good to feel famous :-)

Tomorrow is going to be even more CRAZY!!! Aly and I have to take our turn as "project managers" for the day, so we had to plan out an agenda. Our problem is that at 4:30, we all have to be to the Graduate Student Advisory Council awards banquet in our Sunday best to accept the Creative Activities Award we were given for our Dudley project. This greatly disrupts the flow of the day--because we have to give people time to go home and change--but I think we got it worked out. We are really getting down to the wire, so tomorrow we have to start hanging artwork, hang the interpretive panels, finish some object mounts, put up some display cases, start adjusting the gallery lights, FIND THE MISSING PHOTOS, print object labels, find frames for things that haven't been framed yet, and what we really need to do is VACUUM the galleries! There is sawdust everywhere.

The best part of tomorrow will be that Greg gets to come to Charleston for lunch! (Aly and I were sure to schedule lunch into our busy day.) Tomorrow is Greg's day off of work this week, and he will be in Sullivan helping his mom get things packed up at their house there, so he said he will sneak away for lunch, and I'll do the same! That means that when he comes to the exhibit opening festivities on Saturday, we will have seen each other five out of the last eight days--an unprecedented number!!! :-) So even though this week is crazy, I like it because I'm getting to see Greg more than usual. Dr. Rugh will be flying to Chicago tomorrow and staying with her sister, then she'll be here on Friday, so this is a good week! Well, I'm pooped, so I'm heading to bed here pretty soon to gear up for another day at the zoo tomorrow.

Save the Bread Pudding!

I was horrified tonight when I received an e-mail from my old Natchez roommate, Jessica, saying that Silver Street in Natchez is currently closed because of flooding!! Noooooooo--not Silver Street, where Magnolia Grill is located!! Somebody save the delicious bread pudding that they serve! My heart is broken. I love that bread pudding. Look how crazy it is in Natchez with the flooding. The first picture you see up at the top is one that I took during the summer of the Mississippi River at Natchez at its usual 15-foot depth, and then below that you can see the picture that Jessica sent to me of the flooded river. You will notice that the river has flooded a lot of the low-lying areas along its banks. There were some farms along there, so I imagine that they got flooded out. Next you will see the Isle of Capri Casino riverboat at the bottom of Silver Street. Usually it is far down the riverbank and a long ramp is required to get out to the boat, but as you see below that photo, the boat is now significantly higher than usual--it is now even with the street!!! Jessica said that the water in the river is still rising, so that's not very good news. Hopefully they'll be able to figure out some way to get rid of the extra water and open Silver Street again.

I am soooooooooooo tired. I didn't get home tonight until 11:30 p.m.--and we started exhibit construction at 9:00 this morning. There has been quite a bit of drama here because Aly's boyfriend of two years, Darrin, chose last night, of all nights--the first day of the busiest week of Aly's life, to break up with her. She is totally devastated. Last night I heard a loud knock on my door and then I heard her hyper-ventilating outside my door. I opened my door to find her there sobbing, and her whole body was shaking. She told me that Darrin had broken up with her. He's a jerk. Even though she wouldn't want to hear this right now, the truth is that she's better off without him. I can't believe he chose this particular week--just a month before she'll be heading home to New York, to break up with her. Bad timing by him. If anyone even looked at Aly today, she would start to cry, so it was a little rough for her. Poor Aly. I hope she will be okay. I sat on the couch with her last night for a while and wrapped her in a blanket so she could cry and cry. I was just glad that she didn't pass out from hyper-ventilating.

This morning I had to do some touch-up painting at the Tarble, then I put some caulking on some pieces of wood that were uneven, then I painted an entire wall, then I moved object pedestals around, then I built a mount to hold our railroad switch ties up, then I painted over the screws in our 18-foot-long temporary wall (which got fixed today so it is now "structurally sound"), then I went and picked Dr. Hardeman up from a meeting and took him home, then I went back to the Tarble and attached some pictures to the "interactive flip panel," then I helped assemble the train car walls.

My one reprieve today was having dinner with Greg and his mom! Sister Bowles flew in today from Arizona to start packing things up at the house in Sullivan. Greg brought her to Charleston on their way back from St. Louis, and we all went out for Thai food. It was a wonderful break from the day and it was fun to see Greg and his mom. Well, I am really, really tired, so I am going to go to sleep for a few hours before I have to get up and start all over again in the morning.

The Horoscope

Today is Mr. Riccio's birthday. Who better to spend it with than us? He said that he was thinking of laying low for the day--sort of taking the day off--but then he read his horoscope. He brought the newspaper in with him to show us because he didn't think we would believe it if he didn't bring it in for us to see. It was so funny! It said something to the effect of: "Today you will need to give guidance to a group of individuals working on a collective project. They may need guidance, so don't hesitate to lend them instruction." Thank you horoscope for telling Mr. Riccio what we have tried to many times! What an appropriate horoscope. My horoscope today, which was also appropriate, said: "It may sound a little harsh, but it is possible that you will get suckered into something today! Someone may appeal for your help, even though they're not entirely prepared to do their bit." Story of my life here. :-) Maybe there's something to horoscopes after all.

Today was a crazy day. We began at the studio this morning at 8:30 to start loading everything into vans and trucks to be transported to the Tarble. There was so much heavy stuff to move, and we all had our turns almost getting crushed by large pieces of wood, but we had no casualties. Then, we all drove over to the Tarble and then had to unload everything we had just loaded. We were all exhausted when we were done with that! Once we got everything unloaded and the assistant director of the Tarble Arts Center looked at everything (we're having to work with the assistant director because Kit, the director, broker her ankle), and then several problems started to become apparent. Problem #1: We have a large, 18-foot-long wall in one of the galleries, and Mr. Riccio had planned to support said wall with just two pieces of plywood. Assistant director Mike said "no way" to that idea because the wall could tip over--crushing visitors and paintings. So, now we don't know what to do about the wall. We might have to construct a framework out of two-by-fours to hold it up. Then, our temporary wall in the other gallery just looks bad because it's made of plywood instead of the material that we had originally ordered--the stuff that got stuck on the train near Chicago. But we're hoping that with some creative lighting techniques we can hide the fact that the wall looks really cheap-o. This wall could also easily be pushed over, but we have no ideas for making it stand up, so we'll just have to hope that nobody pushes it :-)

Then, Catherine and I were sent off to Champaign with some vague directions to a place called Illini Plastics to get some help gluing together the Plexiglas case Mr. Riccio was trying to build. We took my GPS with us in hopes that she would help us find the plastics place, but we didn't have an address, so we just kind of had to drive around until we found ourselves in the "industrial" part of town--by the train tracks. Then we saw the Illini Plastics warehouse and took our Plexiglas box inside. When we showed the box to the Plexiglas guys, they started to laugh. They said, "Wow! How old is that Plexiglas?" We had no idea. Then they wondered what had been used to cut the edges. We had no idea. Then they wondered how old the glue was that Mr. Riccio had tried to use on it. No idea. And finally they wondered where the Plexiglas had been stored because there was a thin film of something greasy on top--grease is not good for gluing Plexiglas. We called Mr. Riccio for answers to the questions, and all he knew about the age of the Plexiglas was that it was "really, really old," and the greasy film on it was caused by some paint thinner he had put on the Plexiglas to remove some spray adhesive he had put on it to keep the surface from getting scratched. When we told the Plexiglas guys this, they started to laugh really hard. They said that paint thinner disintegrates Plexiglas and showed us that if you even touched the face of the Plexiglas, it would get scratched because the plastic particles were being eaten by the paint thinner. So, what we ended up having to do was have the Plexiglas guys build us a new box. While we were waiting for it to get built, we went out on the town in Champaign for a little while :-)

Then, we made it back into town just in time to see the award results from the i-movie competition in which our Dudley video had been entered. We got second place! Then we had to go have a debrief meeting to discuss what we finished today and what still remains to be done. Much still has to be done, but hopefully it will all come together. I'm so excited because Dr. Rugh is coming on Friday!!!! She will be our distinguished guest speaker at the exhibit opening on Saturday. It will be fun for her to see campus because it was actually she who suggested that I check out Eastern Illinois University (she's friends with Dr. Reid and had heard about the program from her)--and I never would have met Greg if I hadn't come here! She's planning to stay here all day on Saturday and come to the dinner we're having that evening, so it will be fun to get to catch up with her a bit. Well, I'm exhausted so I don't think it will be too long before I head to bed, and I am going to be really sore tomorrow!!!

Let the Games Begin

Exhibit construction week has officially begun. It was kicked off today by a seven-hour work session at the studio. Fortunately I was able to go to church with Greg first! But the remainder of the day was spent painting walls, sanding wood, grinding the rough edges off of hinges, sanding more wood, painting, wallpapering, and painting some more. :-) It was a long day, but we got a lot done. Unfortunately, even though construction week doesn't technically start until tomorrow, we had to work today because we still had a lot of unfinished work. I would have preferred to not have worked today, but my classmates quite possibly would have banished me from the program had I not shown up. Now, tomorrow we have to undertake the foreboding task of moving everything we have built from the Art Park West studio to the Tarble Arts Center on campus--a distance of approximately 4 miles. The problem will be dealing with the size of the things we have built. Remember how the train car parts are 8-feet tall? Hmmmm, we'll see how that goes.

We've been encountering the usual "last minute" mishaps. Mr. Riccio was building Plexiglas cases today, but the special glue he had was eating away at and cracking the Plexiglas, which is not good, so we're not sure what to do about that. Also, the material we were supposed to get to build the temporary wall for one of the exhibit galleries got stuck on a train just outside of Chicago. The train people said they could deliver it to us by Wednesday, but that would be too late (because we would still have had to paint it). We thought of finding some horses and staging a train robbery like Jesse James, but we realized that might not be too effective. It actually wouldn't be a robbery though, since we already paid for the material. But anyway, Mr. Riccio ended up getting some plywood for a us to use instead. The problem is that even after a few coats of paint, the plywood still looks like plywood--not very museum-ish, but we'll work with it. I think if we strategically place the exhibit panels and paintings, we'll be able to cover up the most noticeable spots.

This week will be pretty crazy. We all have to have a turn being the "project manager" for a day and making sure all of the required tasks get done. Our teachers have scheduled no class sessions for this week, but in addition to installing the exhibit, there's a bunch of extra school stuff we have to attend, which will make scheduling kind of hard. Tomorrow we have to attend the "i-Life Movie Awards" to see our Tilford Dudley film's campus debut. Then on Wednesday, as part of the Graduate School Expo, we have to host a reception at the Tarble Arts Center so that people can watch us installing the exhibit and we can tell them what we're doing. It will probably be kind of like watching monkeys at the zoo! Then on Thursday afternoon we have to attend the Graduate School Awards Ceremony to accept the award we were given for our Tilford Dudley project. Whew! It's going to be crazy.

It snowed today. What happened to spring? Supposedly spring will be returning this week. Tonight Aly and I watched part 6 of 7 of "John Adams" on HBO. It was so good! The relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson has been getting pretty tense. They used to be great buddies, but then they started viewing things very differently, and they slowly grew apart. John Adams won't die until next week's part 7, but I was thinking tonight about the story of John Adams' and Thomas Jefferson's deaths--it is SO WEIRD!! Talk about a coincidence to the tenth degree. They both died on July 4, 1826--the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence!!! Is that crazy or what? John Adams' last words were supposedly "Thomas Jefferson survives." But, Jefferson had actually died a few hours before. Maybe John Adams saw his old buddy in the spirit world right before he died? Hmmmm, very interesting.

I am very, very, very, very glad that Greg and I got to have such a fun weekend together! Hopefully I'll get to see him this week again. His mom is flying into town to start moving things out of the house in Sullivan, so we're hoping that we can all meet up for lunch and/or dinner this week. Everything seems better when Greg is around, and he keeps me sane even though I'm surrounded by crazy classmates :-) I love him very much!!! Well, I'm off to bed to get some rest before this crazy week begins.