My second day at Art Porters gallery began at 10:30 AM on the 28th of March, 2021; with blue skies and a cup of iced mocha. I walked through the narrow back alleys behind the gallery to clear my head and get mentally prepared for a new day.
As it was a Sunday, Melvin and Rachel enjoyed the day off. Instead of them, the friendly videographer named Jarren was there to give me company. When I arrived at the gallery, Jarren was in gallery no. 2, filming something for one of their clients.
I set up my laptop at the work space at the back of the gallery, eyeing the door every now and then for a visitor to come in.
After Jarren was done filming, he came upstairs and sat beside me. We conversed casually about what we were studying. Jarren told me that one of Chloe’s paintings sold the day before!
After some casual conversation, I began working on my social media posts which I was given the responsibility to overlook and create more buzz around Chloe’s exhibition. I suggested a newer perspective – particularly, the academically trained perspective of a fine arts student – to promote Chloe’s works on Instagram. My idea was to analyze the technical, aesthetic and compositional aspects of Chloe’s artworks by using what I had learned at Lasalle regarding the formal elements and principles of art and design.
I borrowed the gallery’s shared DSLR camera and took more than 50 photographs of zoomed in details of Chloe’s artworks. I focused on capturing interesting line work, textures, complimentary colors, negative space, organic shapes, natural imagery such as birds and flowers, bold brush strokes, the use of thick and sheer paint etc.
After I had photographed the works, I borrowed the gallery’s shared iPhone and began editing the images by correcting the color balance, saturation and brightness so that the images (that were quite muted on camera) were enhanced to display their natural vibrancy. I downloaded a photo editing app in order to be able to add text onto the artworks. I proceeded to upload them to a Google Drive folder and paste all the images into a Word Document so that I could draft out a short paragraph that described and analyzed the imagery portrayed.
Once I had finished writing text for about 15 images, I began layering the text onto the image on the phone. I made a copy of each image and then dimmed down the saturation, brightness and contrast of the duplicates so that a block of text would be easier to read. The idea was to post 2 pictures of the same detailed image of Chloe’s works; the first one would be the colorized image, the other heavily de-saturated with text.
While I was writing the text, the gallery owner Guillueme came in and asked about my progress. He was happy that I was staying until closing time and that I had taken the initiative to promote Chloe’s work on social media. He read some of the text I had crafted and seemed to really like the idea.
Before I stepped out to lunch at the little café two doors down, I volunteered to water the suspended potted plants that grew from a large shell. I was told they had not been watered in a long time.
I stood on a chair and unhooked them from the metal grill from which they hung and took them outside to water them using a spray bottle that Jarren handed to me. After I had finished, Jarren offered to help me put them up.
A number of other visitors came and went; some were open to a conversation, others weren’t. This time round, I focused on making them feel comfortable in the space, rather than overwhelming them with information that they may or may not want to know! I learned to welcome them all, ask them if they wanted to know more about the exhibit, I asked them if they would be interested in seeing the second gallery, whether they would like to subscribe to our mailing list or leave their card with us and I learned to ask them what they saw in the artworks before I interjected.
After a rewarding second day working as Chloe’s docent, Darren and I packed up at around 7:15 PM, switched off the lights and locked up.