Display Your Art Work

If you have followed my posts, you know I love woodwork and have made  numerous pieces over the many years I have been following this hobby.  Many have sold but there are some special pieces we have held for our own collection.  JoAnn has some sculptural pieces in that collection also.  We have used them to decorate our homes, giving that special personal touch.  Now we have a problem.

When we sold the dream house we built of 6,000 square feet, we moved into a 3,000 square foot home in our planned down-sizing.  The next move to our current home was down-sized to 1,500 square feet.  We find our current abode easy to take care of  and just the right size for us as we age. The problem is we don't have adequate space for all of our art pieces.  We have given some away and sold others but we still don't have room for the special pieces we want to keep and I have a habit of continuing to create new art.  So what do you do?  We certainly aren't going to move to a larger house as we love our little bungalow.  some of the larger pieces are in storage in our garage until we find an outlet to market them.  I decided we heeded a display case for all the smaller pieces so drew up the plans.

My shop has been down-sized too so it didn't seem feasible to try construct a fairly large display cabinet plus a second smaller cabinet in my limited facility.  We had seen the cabinet work of a friends son and were impressed so contacted him with our plan.  He drew up a list of supplies, added in his labor cost and presented us with a contract.  We signed off and after a number of weeks he got back to us with the disappointing message that he couldn't do it.  He had tried but it wasn't working out right for him.  We had paid him a portion of the contract an he had purchased the materials.  At that point I leaped into the situation in an effort to salvage the project.  I offered to take the usable supplies in place of what we had paid and he presented the bills he had so we arrived at a settlement. Now I was faced with the task of constructing the cabinets in my down-sized shop.  It's amazing what you can do when you have no other choice.  When the cabinets were finished I felt good about the outcome.  Take a look at the installation shown below.

The two cabinets contained a variety of size and shaped compartments, each top lit with recessed low voltage lighting.  A transformer was Incorporated in the design with access from the back.  The entire back of each cabinet was enclosed.  After painted to match the wall they looked as though they belonged.  This certainly solved our display need and increased my confidence of what could be done in a down-sized shop.  I like this view with cabinet lights only.

*More detail on my art can be found at my website <www.apatchablue.com>