Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Installation Begins



The past week has been filled with activity....the Nasa exhibit is now down and The Culture of Wine exhibit started installation. The outer walls of the Ansary Gallery were prepped with a layer of cintra board in the areas that would be photo murals the photo murals. Quickly a team of two young ladies from C.C. Creations in College Station began hanging the self-adhesive vinyl 4 foot x 10 foot mural panels. Before long the gallery took on a new feel. Now instead of black walls the gallery had the look of a winery crush pad and rolling vineyard setting. I was very pleased with the look of the murals. They were printed by a small family owned shop in Northwest Houston called 'Sign-Ups and Banners'. I never saw the finished mural panels at the print shop so walking into the gallery and seeing a 'very nice' finished product was great...(and a relief.)

On Thursday, August 20th we moved the big Bucher press into position on the exhibits crush pad. This took some time...a very large truck, about a dozen people, (and of course a little drama.) But then how often do you move a 3800 pound wine press into a Presidential library?
After the press was in place we easily rolled in the 1969 Ford 2000 tractor and valley bin. From there exhibit specialist Jason Hancock and his team began working on wall installation and I started putting in the vineyard corner posts, stakes and trellis wire with the help of some library staff.

After all the work, planning and money spent on the exhibit to this point it was great to see the installation finally begin. It's going to be a busy month....

In the top photo the Bucher wine press is being pushed into the Ansary Gallery in The George Bush Presidential Library. In the photo at the bottom of the page I am tightening a vineyard trellis wire on a corner post.