Gallery wall

I've always wanted to have a simulated art gallery in my home. Our front room is perfect for it, with an open entryway and walls that go up two levels. For three years, the big wall has been sadly bereft of adequate adornment. I don't know much about interior decorating, but the little I DO know is in regards to proportion. It doesn't take an artist to realize the proportion are all wrong here. Too much wall space with a too-little frame.


I started collecting high-quality frames at the local thrift stores...it's one of the BEST secrets. The prints in the frames are always ugly, and no one wants to buy them, so the price is marked down very low, usually less than $7 per frame. When I go browsing there, I don't even look at the prints, I just inspect all the frames. A good solid-wood frame with tight corners and wiring, without any nicks is a great find. I used to buy the frames for my own art at Hobby Lobby when they had a sale, but even with the %50 off sale, it would still cost $40-$60 for the frame, glass, backing, mat, and wires. Just the mat is $7! I LOVE it when I find good frames for cheap! It's a growing hobby for me.

Anyway, I collected various frames and was intimidated beyond all reason to actually put them up on the wall. I knew i wanted a gallery, but I wasn't sure how to do it without making it look like a mess. I knew there had to be some element that tied things together, such as matching frames, similar theme, similar colors, etc. My random collection of art doesn't have ANY matching theme, and all my frames were mismatched in a variety of colors. I kept putting git off since I wasn't sure how to pull it off nicely. I finally stumbled across a Martha Stewart idea: Have the frames make one coherent shape as the common element. In other words, have all the frames fit within a square of space and make it obvious, so the entire arrangement looks like a large square piece. I finally found it!

Next job was to wire every frame and get it ready for hanging. I actually enjoy this part and find it strangely satisfying. However, by the end of wiring over a dozen frames, my fingers were admittedly bruised. Not satisfying.

Hanging the pieces were another story...all the advice I found online for hanging a gallery really didn't help. I tried several approaches and finally gave up on them all. My answer was to just start hanging them from the bottom left corner and work my way straight up and over, hanging each piece by eye-balling the distance. The top pieces were too high to comfortably reach, and I'm stoo lazy to go wrestle the ladder out of the garage, so I climbed on the backs of chairs and the tops of various unsteady furniture. I was so eager to finish it before Nathan arrived home from work. All told, it took 3 hours to wire and hang it all, and he came home when I had 2 frames left to hang. Not bad.

My goal is to fill every frame with my own artwork. BUT, my rate of completion is currently quite low (I just never seem to have a whole day to devote to painting...or even a hour hour....hmmm, I wonder why?) so they won't all be filled for some time. Until that point is reached, I'm filling the frames with a collection of prints from the great classical art masters like da Vinci, Rembrandt, Raphael, and Michaelangelo. I'm also trying to go for a religious blend of pieces, trying to keep it centered on Christ for now. I also am trying to finish the few paintings I've started and left unfinished so I can put them up.

I was impatient with one of the empty frames and didn't want to wait for mail-order prints to arrive, so I made my own rendition of a da Vinci sketch. I changed the mouth so she's just barely smiling; in the original da Vinci version she isn't smiling at all. It's not a piece I'm particularly fond of, but it will do for now as a place-keeper until I get something better.