art installation
how to avoid hanging, yourself
Years ago, we began traveling to our customer’s homes, delivering artworks that were too cumbersome for them to transport or hang themselves. That has, over the years, evolved into an art preparatory service that includes working with customers who are just needing installation of artworks in their home or offices. We come to you with the hardware (excluding artist specific mounting hardware, which occasionally requires custom made pieces), tools, and expertise to assist you in choosing the best locations to hang artwork and the methods used for hanging.
Getting all your picture frames in the correct eye-line, making sure that rows of images are square and in straight lines, and creating casually (looking) family groupings are all picture hanging challenges that we are happy to help you navigate to produce the perfect finishing touches to well designed living spaces.
While we are happy to help everyone with their art display needs, we still maintain our initial focus on customer service, offering deep discounts on installation costs to our customers who are framing their artworks through our frame shop. This allows us to make sure that the artworks that we are conserving and the framing that we are creating will be their very best on your walls for years to come.
some tips and tricks
center line
Museums, galleries, institutions, and the like all use a standardized center line to both make hanging easier and to create a uniform and pleasant aesthetic for viewing artwork.
Ideally you want your eye to be able to flow from one piece to another without being pulled from plane to plane.
60 inches to the center of the frame is, probably, the most widely used standard with variations ranging from 58 to 62 inches.
salon style
Don't be afraid of groupings.
And don't be too committed to matching sets and pairs of images.
Combining artworks in the same visual plane can create fantastic and sublime interplays of style, subject, and form that can elevate them all.
Being able to see pieces along side one another makes it possible to see complimentary and contrasting elements in a whole new light.
stay grounded
Pairing artwork with furniture is a great place to start, especially when hanging in a whole new space.
If art is hung too high, or without context to objects in a room, then it becomes un-tethered visually. Without a relationship to the rest of the room these "floating" artworks can make a space feel vacuous and uncomfortable.
By associating the art, we can create little vignettes that make a space feel comfortable and intentional.
be decisive
Arbitrary decisions in art are great.
If you commit to your ideas and are decisive about placements, then even hanging with seemingly nonsensical decisions will appear correct.
The world of art is made of rules and guidelines, but those strictures exist only so that we can break them in pursuit of perfection.
start with the low hanging fruit
One of the hardest things about starting an art hanging project, especially after a move or renovation where everything needs to be redone from scratch, is getting started. It is so easy to become inundated by all the choices, so many pictures, so many places to hang them, that it is easiest to put it off for later.
The best way, by far, to break through that barrier is to start with the locations and pieces that are no-brainers. If you know that you are going to hang your favorite oil painting over the fireplace, then start there.
When you run into an impasse, move on to another location. As you hang, just keep circling back around to those areas that you have put off initially and you will find that as you get the art off the floor you will have less spaces needing to be filled and less choices of what to put up.
That way, when you hit the really hard choices, you will have a significantly smaller pile to work with and the answers will be more obvious.
like Rome, you don't have to get
done in one day.
Hanging everything in one go can absolutely be done.
I've done it and I've seen it done, but it's not always pleasant and it's not for everybody.
In many cases, the best way to go through the process of hanging a large amount of artwork is to take it in stages. Start with all the most important locations and pieces. Then spend some time living with the art and see what feels empty, where it might feel crowded, and see what pieces you miss having in certain areas.
Allowing the hanging to evolve organically can reduce some of the anxiety of trying to make major life decisions all in one big exhausting push. Because, let's face it, even when we mean to do something as a stop-gap and come back to it later, it generally ends up being 5, 10, 20 years before we get around to it.
Your artwork should be an escape from frustration and good things take time.