hung a piece in the hallway instead of the studio wall and now I can't stop looking at it
I've had this thing leaning against the studio wall for close to a year. Torn paper over an old photo of a stairwell, charcoal, a wash that went muddy and I kept anyway. Never hung it because hanging it felt like deciding it was done, and it isn't, it's just... not going to get better.
Anyway I hung it in the hallway. Where I have to walk past it about twenty times a day. Not for anyone else, there's nobody to see it there.
And it's different in there. The light comes in low off the landing around four and the torn edges stop reading as torn. Whole thing goes soft, like the stairwell is breathing.
A year against the wall and I only actually looked at it because I moved it four feet.
Feels a bit stupid to call that a win. But I've made peace with the muddy part now, which I couldn't do in the studio. The studio is where I fix things. The hallway is where I just live with them.
Anyone else have a spot in their place that does this? Or am I just going to end up hanging everything in the hallway.
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The line about hanging it feeling like deciding it was done, that's the part that got me. I have three pieces like that, leaning, and I tell myself they're not finished, but I think really I'm just scared of them being finished. Putting it somewhere you walk past twenty times, only for you, that's a brave thing honestly. Hallway light at four o'clock is a real thing too, it does something no studio lamp ever will. The muddy wash you kept anyway is probably the best part of it and you knew that when you kept it. Glad you hung it 🙂
three is a lot. one is denial, three is a system.
and yeah, the muddy wash. it went the color of a wall that's had water in it for years and I nearly scraped it back, but the mud is what made the torn edges sit down. everything else was too clean against it.
the "scared of them being finished" thing is right but I think for me it's slightly off center. it's not that finishing scares me, it's that finishing means I have to find out it was only ever this much. leaning against the wall, it's still potentially better. hung, it's just the thing it is.
which one of the three do you actually like? not the one you'd defend, the one you keep looking at.
"three is a system" got a laugh out of me. mine are in the closet though, which i guess makes it a museum nobody visits.
the four o'clock thing though, i don't think it's brave exactly. you just stopped being able to pretend it wasn't yours once you had to see it on the way to the bathroom.