We finally opened the doors, albeit quietly, on August 12. Many of our participating artists and significant others, came for an informal opening reception in the early evening. Kim and I thank them all. I’m greatly encouraged by all the warm and positive comments.

It’s been quite an effort, both physically and psychologically, over the last several weeks; so many details, so many loose-ends, so many steps to climb, and pieces of art to display, and price and label and enter into our computer systems!

Hence, it’s taken me a few days to recover and find what might pass as a routine. Of course, the relentless blogging continues unabated since it’s a key part of our marketing plan. For the most part, we’ve now finished the start-up phase — only a few more items to complete. Next, comes our marketing and promotional effort, and our “grand opening” events planned for mid-September.

Kim and I have been wiring, re-wiring, pre-hanging, hanging, re-hanging, moving, positioning and re-positioning over 60 pieces of 2D art on our cable system over the last 72 hours. I’m writing this entry during my ladder climbing rest period. And, I’ve lost count of all the 3D works, such as ceramics, gourds, metal sculpture, handcrafted boxes, fused glass and jewelry, which Kim has carefully placed on and in our displays.

I think climbing a 12 foot ladder over and over should be an Olympic sport. Our track and cable system has turned out to be one of our better decisions — it would probably have taken 10 times longer to position the wall art and by now we’d have hundreds of holes in our still pristine walls (holes that would now need to be patched and painted). Ninety-five percent of the wall art is now in place, but we have yet to level it — that happens tonight. Then, I have works from 3 remaining artists to hang tomorrow.

Each piece of art looks really good on its own merits. That said, many of the works in here — I’m gazing at them now — look even better next to one another. Additionally, we’ve tried to lay out the works in a holistic way so they complement and/or contrast each other in a coherent and aesthetically pleasing manner — I think some my refer to this as basic curating. I now get goose bumps from looking at all the wonderful art in here!

Kim has also been adding all our artists and their art to our gallery management software system. This will help us keep track of all our inventory and smooth the sales process.

Yes, it’s finally going to happen. We’ll be opening our doors — very soon now. No fanfare. No ribbon cutting. No airplane smoke-writing in the sky. No paparazzi. No videos on Youtube. No publicity, except my words on this blog. And, despite pleas from our children, no giant inflatable gorilla or rainbow colored balloon festooned with a “grand opening banner”. We’ll be doing all the fun and fluffy stuff in mid- to late-September, after we’ve ironed out any operational issues and when the weather is rather more forgiving, which for me is below 85-90ºF!

We’ve been working around the clock recently on a myriad of different items: exterior sign up, computer hardware installed, Vonage service up an running, wireless configured, printer connected, document filing installed, fixtures for point-of-sale hardware set-up, small refrigerator delivered, storage for small supplies put together, bathroom supplies cabinet constructed. My thanks to IKEA for providing many of these well-designed components and fixtures at very affordable prices.

Tomorrow, it’s time to install our track and cable system for hanging our 2D art. This will save our walls from incurring trauma whenever we have to display or move paintings and it should save us time. Then, the rest of our fixtures arrive, hopefully, by Friday.

And, while all this goes on around us, and consumes us, we are continuing to accept and pickup art from our artists — 10 or so this week. Our space is actually starting to look like an art gallery! We’re worn out, but this is so cool!

Our main display unit is complete. We’ll be using it to display some of the beautiful glass and ceramic pieces from our local artists.

Mark, our millworker / carpenter is an old-school craftsman. He is a stickler for detail and a perfectionist at heart. Despite working with challenging materials, such as wood that warps slightly from not having been cured long enough, he’s managed to construct some wonderful pieces for us. He’s done a remarkable job translating our designer’s designs, and your friendly owners’ frequent requests for changes into reality.

Our exterior sign finally appeared outside art251, on August 1. It looks great and complements the interior color scheme and our marketing materials perfectly!

As with many other areas in starting up an art space and retail business from scratch I’ve now become familiar with an entirely new vocabulary. This time my head is buzzing with the language of sign construction: channel letters, raceways, returns, acrylite, wireway, weeps.

The sign was built by NTX Signs of Keller — we’re happy to have awarded our contract to a local company. They did a great job (though they do have a few minor paint scrapes on the trim to touch up). Although our sign was built locally it’s the result of our global logo design contest, which was won by two designers based in Montreal, Canada and Ulm, Germany, plus a few tweaks from your friendly art251 owners.

The sign installers did a great job in the 100°F heat, despite challenges with short ladders, broken drill-bits, unleveled trim and the unforgiving temperature. I can’t wait to see the sign at night. Get ready Keller, art in coming to town!

I couldn’t continue our construction saga without reference to the so-called “gotchas”. These are the miscellaneous problems that appear just when we have completed something else. As I described earlier, Murphy’s Law continues to prevail throughout this adventure of ours. So, we’ve had quite a few of these gotchas over the last 4 months, including: no access to our fiber-optic cable, air conditioning return vent in the wrong wall, air conditioning not up to building code, electrical outlets not working as advertised, and even missing electrical outlets.

Today, however takes the prize, because we were hit by two new gotchas on the same day.

Gotcha #1. Yes! We installed all our great halogen lighting. But… it turned out that the original electrical circuitry for our space was not sufficient for our needs. We made the “mistake” of trying to run all our lights and the air-conditioning system at the same time, only to find that the circuit breakers would trip. So, just when we thought all our lighting issues had been completed we find ourselves needing our electrician to split circuits, put more holes in the wall, run more new conduit and install new electrical boxes. Basically, our landlord wired the space for what looks like residential use rather than for retail.

Gotcha #2. Yes! Our exterior sign was installed today. It looks great. But… the electrician refused to connect it, because the sign company didn’t wire the sign with a grounding cable. So, it’s now 5pm on a Friday, and most people have gone home for the weekend, and it’s unlikely our sign wiring problem will be resolved until early next week. The sign installers will most probably have to remove it to be able to re-install the correct wiring. Oh, and during installation the installers scraped some paint off the storefront trim below the sign. So, now we have to get them to match the color and repaint as well

So, the lessons learned from this story are: when you fix something expect something else to break; never take anything for granted; assume it will always take twice as long plus a week to get anything completed; keep plenty of contingency funds in reserve; cut through the finger pointing as soon as possible; get second and third opinions whenever possible; grow a thick skin; never give up; and search for your sense of humor and cool-off somehow with your favorite relaxation therapy! I need some right now.

Our halogen lighting system finally reached us a couple of days ago after a tortuous sea and land journey via, I believe, the Antarctic and the Andromeda Galaxy (and not a warp speed)!

The lights are installed now and will make our art glow. You’ll see from the pic that all the lights are temporarily pointing downwards in a sad but expectant stance, eagerly awaiting all the art. Not much longer to go now.

We had this idea. Open a fine art space. Surround ourselves with great artists and their art. Expose new artists to new viewers and clients. Educate and assist new collectors. Sell some art, and collect some money in exchange. Simple, right? Wrong.

Invariably, like many other facets of starting up a customer facing business it’s never quite as simple as it sounds, or looks. It’s really quite complex beneath the surface. Just thinking about all the equipment and peripherals and gizmos we need, some of which are temporarily boxed up behind me in our home office (while others we have yet to order), is giving me a troubling headache.

So, here’s my non-exhaustive list of retail components that we’ll need to lubricate the art251 experience and make it smooth and simple for our customers:

• Computer, monitor and keyboard
• Software to track all of our consigned, wholesale art inventory and leased space
• Printer for invoices and lots of other paperwork
• Receipt printer for our credit card receipts
• Credit card terminal and/or magnetic card reader
• Barcode scanner for our inventoried items
• Drawer to store receipts and checks
• Telephone and fax machine
• Lots of miscellaneous cables to join all this equipment together
• Wireless router to hook all our joined equipment to the internet
• Track and cable system and lots of hooks to hang our art
• Music system and speakers
• Display fixtures to showcase work
• Wall tags for our art narratives and artist bios
• Filing cabinets for all the paperwork that we’re not supposed to need

This doesn’t even touch on all the paper-based items we will need, from more business cards, artist postcards, wrapping paper, flyers, bags, boxes, labels, and on and on. I’m so thankful for the internet — without it the process of finding these items, comparing prices and ordering would have taken us months. Now, with a couple of clicks on the right websites we can completely outfit our space with all the necessities of modern retail.

It seems like it’s been a long wait. We went through lengthy design iterations with Bryan Wetz, our interior designer. Our custom display units were built offsite. So, from day to day we’d see little progress inside the space. But, now most of the displays are done, and they have started arriving in art251.

Two of our main display units arrived on July 16 — it was worth the wait (see below). It’s quite an experience to see an idea go from scribble on a napkin, to an artist’s sketch, to a virtual CAD model, to a 3D miniature, to a designer’s drawing, to the real, touchable thing! Kudos to Mark and his carpenters and millworkers for shaping the crazy ideas, via Bryan, into real wood.

The curves and angles are eye-catching. The wood grains on the millwork show subtly, and the white and blue stains complement the color of the space perfectly. More units, for display and storage, arrive in the next few days. Then, very soon, we’ll be able to start doing something that we’ve dreamed about and waited to do since October 2007 — hang art on the walls, and place art on the displays!

Early on during our design phase we took a conscious decision to make art251 kid-friendly. We have children. We have been inside many art galleries where children are not explicitly forbidden, but their presence certainly doesn’t seem to be encouraged. Not exposing kids to art is a lost opportunity for all.

At art251 we like to expose art to all age groups. So, whether you’re 8 years old or 108, you’ll be welcome inside art251. We even plan to have some great original art oriented towards children, from talented local artists. More on that soon.

Our space is still a construction zone, albeit a steadily improving one. So, before it opens, our kids have been testing out the space for aesthetics and acoustics, and the aisles for accessibility. And the verdict is in: they love it! Of course, they’ll have to slow down when the space is full of beautiful objects that need to be admired in timeless slow motion. We recommend this for adults too — slow down, let our beautiful, calm space envelop you, and let the art transport you elsewhere, with or without children.

For any eagle-eyed, legal watchers please keep in mind we’re an art space. Our objects are unique and precious, especially to us and our artists. Some of our works are fragile. art251 is not a “McJump-bouncey-play-castle” space, so bring your kids, and your great-great-grand mother — just exercise some common sense when you visit.

Growing up, I spent most of my summer months vacationing with family in Northern Italy, near Milan. Some of my relatives lived on a dairy farm, which provided milk for the local Parmigiano (Parmesan) cheese producer. The farm was in a two-building village in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains. It had no phone service, in fact the nearest phone was a 20 minute bicycle ride to the nearest Church / restaurant / grocery store / cafe. Please keep in mind this was only back in the early 1970s.

Then one day, telephone service arrived at the farm. Groups of engineers had planted mile upon mile of telephone poles, and they pulled phone wires from the nearest town, up and down a mountain, across a valley, through a forest and over a couple of streams and into the farm. It was a revelation! Though, my grandfather could never figure out how to hold the telephone handset.

The reason for this story? Thirty-plus years later, and following a global technological and communications revolution, I feel like we’ve just been through the same impossibly tortuous experience with installing phone service in art251. Nowadays it’s fiber optic cable, solid state switching, VOIP, wireless ethernet. But to me it feels the way the experience must have felt to my grandparents in Italy. Alora! Finalmente, dopo dieci anni e arrivato il servizio telefonico. Phew, it’s finally here!

We live in a mobile, untethered, wireless world. Or, so we are told by those glamorous models in “work from the beach” television commercials. Well, if only it were that simple for our art space. We had three different contractors — electrical / telephone, fiber optic, and exterior signage — all working inside art251 today, all busily wiring, or discussing wires, cables and conduit.

This morning was not a pretty sight. We had what looked like miles of electrical and telephone cable in various primary colors dangling from the ceiling and walls, and snaking through panels, boxes and holes of different shapes and sizes. By this afternoon, the chaos was gone, the cables hidden and we were all wired up — lots of extra power where we need it and fiber optic service for our communications connections from art251 to the world beyond. Today, we took another step towards completion.