An eagle-eyed viewer recently sighted our mini-gallery director, Lady Penelope, out on the town. Sources confirmed that Her Ladyship was celebrating having signed another artist to join art251.

Also, we hear that this may be the last time Lady Penelope will be able to trip the light fantastic and sip refreshments for a while. art251 opens its doors very soon, and all the gallery staff will be far too busy for this type of relaxation!

We have a point-of-sale and gallery management system to get up an running, final fixtures to install, furniture to deliver, lights to re-position, track and cable system to install, art to hang and display…

Lady Penelope celebrating the signing of an artist for art251. Courtesy of anon.

Our mini-gallery director, Lady Penelope, gives our floor a thumbs up during a brief tour of the art251 space. While our painter was on break we snooped around and uncovered part of the floor. It still needs a final buffing after all the work in the space is complete. But, it’s looking good. Next stop, the ceiling. Our 6-year old would be distraught to find Lady Penelope hanging around up there, so I’ll not post any pictures.

… well, the store model anyway.

We’ve added the main display surfaces and fixtures to our model. We’re using stickies to represent spaces for all our art. This will help us plan, allocate and (re-)arrange the space. Also, we’ll be able to show it to our participating artists. Importantly, the store model will help us fine-tune and finalize our financial model. See, it really does serve a useful purpose besides satisfying my latent desire to be an architect.

I must admit even Lady Penelope, our gallery director, seems much happier now that we have some “art” on the walls. I wish that the build-out of our real space were this simple. We failed the city of Keller’s miscellaneous building inspection on May 21. It turns out that the existing return air-conditioning vent and duct was placed in the wrong spot, and hence not up to code. So, our landlord has kindly agreed to move it, but this all takes valuable time. On a more positive note, we did pass our fire safety inspection on May 23 — though, I’m not sure our model is fire-rated.

Below you can see what our space looks like early in the morning. Notice how many of the fixtures are movable. This will help us keep the space fresh, and open it up for events and artist openings.

OK, if you’re not a Thunderbirds fan, you’ll be scratching your head right now. So, just keep scratching and read on.

I’m visual and Kim is tactile. So, she had this great idea of building a model of our space. We couldn’t stop at mere drawings or a 3D computer aided design model or a virtual art space in Second Life. No, we had to build a real model. So, here’s our space, complete with 6 inch gallery director. Let’s call her… well, Lady Penelope. Our 6 year-old daughter will be hopping mad when she finds out that I’ve kidnapped one of her minions to become our first official gallery director. Be sure to return to our blog often to read more about Lady Penelope’s adventures in art.

You’ll notice there’s no art on display yet, the doors and windows are missing, and there are small gaps between the floor and the walls. Please bear with us, it’s a work in progress, and the contractor is currently busy on another job. Despite needing some minor adjustments, the model is actually to scale, 1 inch to 1 foot – so Lady Penelope would be 6ft and the walls 14 feet high. We’ll be adding fixtures, display space and some art next. This is so much cheaper than building a real art space!

As for Thunderbirds. It was a children’s cult classic puppet show by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson from the late 1960s. Our kids watch re-re-runs of it today. They like Lady Penelope and Thunderbird 2. My favorites are Parker and Brains.