Preparing artwork for exhibition

I used to think getting work exhibition-ready meant signing a form and loading the car. It is not. Preparing artwork for exhibition is a weeks-long negotiation between the piece you made, the wall it will live on, and the person walking past it with a drink in their hand. I have learned this the hard way, taping corners at midnight and discovering a fingerprint on a matte board that I swear was not there at noon.

This is the checklist I return to, built from studio days spent cropping test strips, color-matching prints, packing tubes, and standing too close to walls while deciding if a piece reads from twenty feet away.

What preparing artwork for exhibition actually looks like

A finished painting and an exhibition-ready painting are two different objects. The first can sit in my studio and be beautiful. The second has to survive transport, lighting, strangers, and comparison with the work beside it.

I start by pulling everything I might show and laying it out on the floor. Some pieces belong in a portfolio review; others belong on a wall. A Face in the Canopy is a good example of the latter, because its whole trick is the slow reveal: the monkey face buried in pattern only works if a viewer has room to step back and let the leaves separate. A small crowded hallway would kill it. You can see more finished work like it in the portfolio.

I ask three questions before anything goes on the list:

• Does the work read from across the room?
• Does it reward someone who steps closer?
• Is the surface, edge, and hardware clean enough that the object itself disappears?

If any answer is no, that piece goes back to the bench or stays home.

The edit: not every finished piece gets a wall

Curating your own work is the most awkward part. I have a bias toward the newest thing on the table, but a show needs rhythm: small against large, quiet against loud, pattern against open space. Hibiscus At Full Density, where the flowers overlap on black and the staminal columns run out on long diagonals, can carry a wall by itself. It needs neighbors that do not compete for attention.

Bells Mirrored Into a Grid works differently. The mirrored jellyfish columns behave like architecture, almost like pilasters. That piece wants to sit beside something looser, maybe a single botanical or a text-based mixed-media work, so the grid does not feel like a room divider.

I also leave work out if it has unresolved hardware, a warped panel, or a frame that no longer matches the rest. Better to show ten confident pieces than fifteen apologetic ones.

Preparing prints and originals side by side

For this studio, exhibition prep usually means both originals and prints. The prints project here involves cropping, color-adjusting, printing, packaging, and sometimes hand-embellishing each copy. That last step matters: a print that has been touched back into with pencil or wash behaves differently under glass than a straight mechanical reproduction. It catches light the way an original does, and collectors notice.

I keep the originals in a separate workflow. Paper pieces like Drawn on the Shop's Own Paper need extra attention because the cheese-shop wrapper substrate is already busy. Before any show, I inspect the printed base for new creases, check that the peach face blocks have not drifted toward a color I did not intend, and make sure the wide black brush marks sit flat under the mat. Mixed media hides nothing; every surface decision shows.

Every piece gets photographed before it leaves. Not phone snapshots, but neutral-light, straight-on documentation. If a work sells during the run, I want a record that is better than my memory.

Murals, mockups, and scale

I am known for murals, and people often ask how wall-scale work fits into a gallery. Usually it does not, literally: a mural belongs on its building. But the preparation for a mural has taught me everything I know about spatial planning.

For the Clark Mural, I worked through planning references and mockups before any paint touched the Surf Shack wall. That same mockup habit now feeds how I hang a show. I sketch the wall to scale, drop in each piece as a paper rectangle, and tape it to the studio door. It saves holes in the gallery drywall and it saves my pride.

Pieces like Cut-Paper Garden Over the Range and Fern, Cup, And Chalk Light are murals, but they are also studies in scale. Cut-Paper Garden floats those cream botanical-abstraction shapes over a deep olive kitchen wall; the negative space around the range is half the composition. Fern, Cup, And Chalk Light turns a menu into artwork on a dark interior wall. Both prove that the empty space around an image is as designed as the image itself. I carry that into a gallery hang: I measure breathing room between frames the way I measure breathing room around a painted cup.

Labels, lighting, and the last 10%

The final stretch is boring and non-negotiable. Labels have to be straight, the right font size, and level. I write mine to answer the question a viewer is too shy to ask: what am I looking at, what is it made of, and how big is it? No manifestos, no apologies.

Lighting is where I have made the most expensive mistakes. LEDs can push cool colors into green; halogens can turn warm greys orange. I bring a few small pieces to the venue early, if possible, and look at them under the actual fixtures before the full hang. That is the only way to know whether A Face in the Canopy will keep its warm grey separation or collapse into the background pattern.

Then there is packing. Tubes, foam corners, glassine, bubble wrap, a clean cloth for fingerprints, a hammer I regret bringing, and the list of what goes where. I never trust that the venue has everything I need.

Opening night is not the finish line

The show opens, people show up, and then the real maintenance begins. I check labels that have been bumped crooked, replace spent bulbs, and make sure nothing has shifted in the humidity of a crowded room. If prints are available, I keep a clean handling copy away from the wall and direct interested visitors to the shop for originals, prints, and stickers.

After the run closes, I photograph the deinstalled walls, update the portfolio with installation shots, and inspect each piece for new wear before it goes back into storage. That inspection tells me what to reinforce next time.

Preparing artwork for exhibition is not glamour work. It is measuring, taping, color-correcting, and second-guessing. But when a viewer stops in front of A Face in the Canopy and that monkey face finally turns out of the thicket at them, all of it is worth it.

If you are working toward your own show and want to talk through the practical side, you can get in touch here. I also share time-lapse hangs and process clips over on YouTube.