MORE Artwork

Another day in the house and I finally started tackling the matting room.

Originally, it was our bedroom, the larger of the two in the house.  Then, when we became totally immersed in Disney, suddenly we had so much artwork that we didn't know what to do with it all.  The idea of paying someone to mat and frame it was way too expensive, besides, we weren't sure we wanted it all framed.  But we definitely wanted it matted, if for no other reason than to preserve it.

What to do???

We decided the easiest thing to do was to teach ourselves how to mat and frame.  Then we opened up a small business, matting and framing all our friends and Disney cohorts artwork.   We quickly discovered that framing is quite a space intensive endeavor.  Matboard is 32x40 inches, and needs to be stored properly so it doesn't bend and spoil.  Then you need a really big table to work on.  It didn't take long for us to see that this wasn't something we could do on the kitchen table.

So we gave up our bedroom, moved our stuff into the smaller room and the matting room was born.

Since matting is such a wasteful enterprise (you cut this huge hole in the middle of a piece of matboard, leaving a slightly smaller piece as waste), we found we were able to mat most of our own pieces out of the waste.  It was a great little enterprise for a couple of years, till we finally got most of our pieces done.  Then we backed off.

But we never moved back in to the matting room.  It quickly became a catch all for all kinds of things.  Over the years, more artwork piled up on the huge table, then on the  shelves, then under the matting table.

When we came back, it was apparent that this room was going to be the kicker.  Tons of things piled very high, now with a pretty thick five year old coat of dust on top of everything.

So I've been working around this room.  After all, it's not like we didn't have a ton of other stuff to sort through!  But today I decided to try to give it a go.

Geez, what was I ever thinking??  There are hundreds of pieces, some original, some reproduction, some just cut out of magazines, you name it, we have it.

There was a time when Disneyland had an art gallery above Pirates of the Caribbean.  They used to have events where they would create photo reproductions of original Disney artwork, then have the artist come in for one day and have a signing.  These were limited editions, usually numbering 100-300, selling for anywhere from $30 to $100.  And you know what?  I think we must have every one they ever did!

Now we have five huge tubs of artwork to take down to LA on our next trip.  I was thinking this trip would be artwork and books, but now I'm not so sure.  Maybe only the artwork will fit.

But at least we're moving stuff, 

slowly heading for life on the road once more.