making: an art wall

If I could only do one thing to make a space feel like home to me it would hanging artwork. I know it's a finishing touch and seems like it should be after paint, and furniture and rearranging and who knows what else, but I like to hang artwork right away.























The new apartment is not exception, in fact with expansive high-ceilinged white walls, the need burns brighter than usual. It helps that during the packing, moving, unpacking, I unearthed a whole section of my art collection that I had previously forgotten that I had, and I really wanted to frame,group and hang some of these great pieces that had been languishing in a box for far to long.























I decided to tackle the big wall in the living room first, and with the dark and modern furniture (courtesy of my roommate who previously had her own fully furnished apartment and therefore just transferred all of that stuff here) I decided to stick with black frames only. I also figured this would unite seemingly disparate artwork, or at least that's how I hoped things would pan out.























Luckily for me I've got a whole slew of black frames in various sizes so I pulled all the plain unadorned ones and started picking work I felt I would like to see each day. Quickly a pink and blue and gray theme emerged, as well as a trend of animals, and I decided to go with that.























Now all I had to do was decide what went where, so I laid all the frames on the floor and started fiddling around with combinations. I didn't want two pieces of a similar size and tone next to each other, nor did I feel like grouping all the blue on one side, so I spent a good patch of time (about as long as it takes to bake off a batch of cookies) shuffling about, moving one here and switching these two out and hemming and hawing until I felt that I had settled upon an arrangement I felt was comfortably mixed and random without being a jumbled mess.
























After that all I had to do was punch some holes in the wall and hang it all up. I am pretty meticulous about measuring so there was only one time when I had to make two holes for one frame, and other than that the hanging of the work proceeded very uneventfully. This was the end result. I feel it's a nice balance, but like everything, I very well may move stuff around, and don't think I won't switch artwork out as the mood takes me. I could completely change all the pieces for a totally different feel, who knows.























PS: you should note the amazing vintage typewriter collection in the image above, it's my roommates and it's pretty awesome, though I have to remind myself occasionally that I cannot use these typewriters as I would so very much like to!