TGINF—Thank Goodness It's Not Friday

It's 6 days until graduation and one day until the graduate show opening. Friday is the day of the opening and there was so much work to be done. It's the second day in a row for me of 9 hours of manual labor. Yesterday painting, today hanging the knitting from the ceiling which required about a million trips to the ceiling on a twelve-foot ladder, and reaching full extension above my head with the electric drill to put the hooks in. Drilling the pilot hole, then drilling the hook in, climb down, get the fishing line, climb up tie it, climb down tie to the knitting at the desired height, cut it, move the ladder, repeat. Except it doesn't always end up in the right place once the hooks are installed because of the unpredictability of the sag, so then new holes, new hooks, moving the string...etc. God forbid if you want to change your mind. Is that still not high enough? Not to mention adjusting the little shims on my light required climbing on the 12-foot ladder as well.

In the morning I was still concerned about the light diffusing through the blackout curtains, it was lighting up my whole room once eyes adjusted. And it just was competing with my framing projector, which is rather dim. I decided to be bold and ask for the second time if I could have a double layer on the blackout curtain. This time they complied and added disposable paper shades behind the blackout curtains. When the gallery helpers finished installing them, they said, "There, the room is as dark as our souls now." Indeed it's now pitch black inside my room, which is awesome but created a new challenge—how can I light this place in a way that I want and so that people wont trip and stuff.

I started playing with the different lights they had around and everything was too bright. It was quite the predicament. I placed one light face down against the floor and it was perfect. The soft glow from the rim of the light was perfect. But a second one was needed and that proved difficult. In the end I got two lights to work.

So I'm almost done.

Christine is still assembling her complex structure and Bina is helping out since she's done with hers. We aren't required to attend any lectures until our work is finished. Tonight there was a lecture but we decided to continue installing and order pizza and work a few more hours.