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.

We’ve selected our contractor for the exterior sign. Both bidders offered us similar designs and installation terms, and both have pretty good reputations with local businesses. So, not surprisingly, we went with the lowest bid.

The sign was approved by the city and our landlord yesterday. So, here’s a mockup superimposed on our storefront. Note that these colors are not the precise ones that will go on the sign, since it’s impossible to show the exact acrylic, plexiglass colors online. The final style and color scheme matches our interior, logo, website / blog and our marketing materials. The sign should be up by the end of the month.

We’re continuing to make progress on the art251 construction, albeit more slowly than we had anticipated.

You’ll see from the latest image that our floor (though dusty and missing baseboards), walls and ceiling are done. We’re missing all our fixtures — both permanent and movable, desk, furniture and halogen lighting. Installation should begin next week.

Keen-eyed observers will notice that our 3D model has arrived, sans Lady Penelope. We’re using it to give prospective artists a pseudo-virtual perspective of the space before it’s complete.

We planned. We pre-planned. We even planned the plan. Now we’re executing the plan, only to find that things that can go wrong, will go wrong.

The unexpected will happen, some known unknowns will announce themselves, and even several “unknown unknowns” will rear their ugly little heads. We’ve found this to be especially true as we hurry to complete the build-out of our art space.

From experience, here are some of the things you should expect from Murphy: holes will appear where they shouldn’t; wiring will not be where it should; doors that should open will stick; doors that should remain closed will be missing; some contractors will do work for which you never asked; others will not even get to do the work you want. All the while, a giant vacuum will continue to drain start-up funds from your business account like a voracious inter-galactic black hole.

art251 will open — unfortunately, a little later than planned. Its two owners will be a little bruised and battered by the process known as “starting a business”; one of its owners will lose a little more hair, both will lose sleep. But, we haven’t lost sight of the goal — we’ll be open.

Well, it’s not bio-diesel — our building regulations stipulate electricity as the only power source.

We share an interior designer, Bryan Wetz.

Bryan is busy working on the (re-)design for Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner, near Hillsboro, Texas. Aside from copious quantities of BioWillie the complex features stores, restaurant space and a 2,000 seater theater. Now, you may be able to put some of our delays into perspective, since I suspect the global country music legend carries a little more weight than two aspiring gallerists based in Keller.

Yes, we’re done with the painting! The ceiling and main walls are “snowdrop” white, according to Messrs Sherwin and Williams. Our inner front wall is a lighter shade of bluish turquoise, to complement the floor. The first of our custom-made fixtures — our desk and checkout station — should arrive later this week from the millwork shop. This means we’ll finally be able to start using the space for our many artist meetings. We, Lady Penelope included, are moving in.

We’re about 4-6 weeks away from opening. We’ve entered a fun, rewarding, and sure to be an eventful, phase of our start-up process — finding artists.

Our plan is to fill the space with original art from local and regional artists, both emerging and established. We’re looking for artists with technical talent, creative passion and stories to tell through their art. We’re looking for high quality art that makes a statement and in a variety of media: painting, glass, jewelry, wood, photography, fabric, ceramic, metal, illustration, assemblage, scratchboard.

Over the last 6 months we’ve met and collected names of many local artists and made mental snapshots of their works. Now, with our artist contract finalized we’ve begun approaching those whose art we’d be honored to see hanging on our bare walls.

If you’re not on our initial list of 100+ artists never fear, we’ll soon have submission guidelines spelled out on our website. If you’re in our area we’d be delighted to take a look at your work and listen to your story. I can’t guarantee that we’ll show your art, but we do have an open door policy. So, in the meantime, if you’re an artist and wish to know more about art251, you can contact us by clicking here.

We selected our art251 logo a few months ago and then settled on a color scheme for our business cards, letterhead, banner and other marketing materials. This helped us pick colors for the website, blog and drove our selection of colors for the interior of the space, including the floor. Now with the exterior sign it gets a little harder, for a couple of reasons.

First, we have to comply with a 3 page specification from the landlord and the detailed local code for our specific area within Keller — no phosphorescent pink neon for instance!

Second, we have to select colors that can be seen from up close, and afar, and the colors need to complement and standout from the tan background of our building. Also, we’re trying to stay true to our original color palette. But, we’re having difficulty finding bright colors that address all of these requirements.

So, we’re currently wrestling with color swatches from one of our potential sign vendors. Hmm, should the color for the lettering be “013 zinc yellow” or “054 turquoise”? Martha Stewart where are you?

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, not quite. It’s our painter’s ladder.

Painting inside the art251 space has begun. We’re going with a greyish off-white for the ceiling and walls, and a lighter shade, compared with the floor, of turquoise for our inner front wall. Our custom designed fixtures and furnishings, to come next, will add a touch of warmth to the cool tones of the space.

We were quietly admiring the first coat of unusual turquoise dye on our newly minted concrete floor.

With sound advice and a car-load of color swatches from our designer — Bryan Wetz — we picked out the remaining hues for our walls and ceiling. We were living quite happily inside an episode of one of those cool designer shows on the HGTV channel. Then, the unexpected happened. Some senior executives from our landlord, Southern Land Company, stopped in during a tour of the development. With open mouths they gaped at the floor. One quietly asked me, “That’s the primer, right?”. With a shake of the head and great pride, I declared that this was just the first coat, and the color would become even more stunning after two more rounds of clear-coat. So, with lease still intact, despite (or due to) the turquoise, we continue with the next phase of our art251 construction. Though, I’m not sure if now our landlord will be watching us and watching our space much more intently.