On gallery sitting
Upping and leaving, and a free printable greeting card
Over the last two weeks I have been helping out as a sitter for a gallery at Gillman Barracks. These Saturdays have been fruitfully silent as I watched visitors filtering into the studio, interacting with the artwork, finding their places around its many walls in a larger choreography unrehearsed and completely unadorned.
There were occasions where I found myself in conversations with interested visitors. It is something about inhabiting an artist’s world, four hours at a time, then having to speak on it and give expression to it. An expression that should be wholly theirs and not at all mine. When we chatted in the gallery we often passed through the artwork into realms that were entirely ours, brief ways of articulating what we started to have in common with each other. Shall I bring it back to the work? Should we have never departed from it - made it our own? I often found myself asking this. In the moment of the question I had already clocked out - upped and left my post as a sitter - whether I thought it suitable or not. For a split-second I worried about what I was meant to do: stringing the clauses of my job description like beads on a counting bracelet.
It seemed like these questions never needed to be asked. Like clockwork, and like the cinematic jolt-awake, we always returned to the premise.
I suppose this upping and leaving - this sequence of departures from obligation - this barter trade of dispensation for gift - is something wonderful and providential about being. That even for two minutes of my day that I could find something I share with a stranger is such a special thing. The moment of passing by, and wishing just to linger and stay.
This thought I think sounds a heavier bell in the service of my life, whether tolling or pealing I am yet to know…
When nobody was around in the gallery, I took to filling my sketchbook so here are some pages of Saturday afternoon scribbling!
My January has been frenzied and I have spent most of it running across the island in site visits and other appointments. Apropos of creating for common, I made a printable greeting card for everyone for every occasion. It comes in two colours: cherry red (pictured) and electric blue.
You can download this printable for free here.
Wishing you every expression of feeling in every place,
With love
Chelsea