My extremely handy wife Sarah made this totally cool crate to ship two of her big paintings in. I’ve created a category called D.I.Y. but it should really be called My Wife Does it Herself because I rarely do it myself, although sometimes I help a little bit. Like if she has to reach something high up, or if it takes two people to carry it.
Anyway, I am kicking myself that I did not take a photo of this crate. Our awesome friends Melissa and Steve, who moved to Philadelphia a few years ago, all of a sudden wrote Sarah that based on the images on the website, they wanted to buy two of the big paintings in the show (“Full Moon Sushi Night” and “Swamp”). Fantastic! But it turns out that it is no easy matter to ship the paintings. Fed Ex and UPS will not ship original art. Too many liability issues, presumably. Probably too many people insist their water colors were worth $10,000 or whatever. So, you basically have to lie or fudge, and therefore cannot get insurance. Also, you need to make your own custom crate.
So Sarah made it herself. This all happened in the basement over two afternoons when I was in my office at school. I came home and there was this five foot high crate, in two halves, into which each painting was bolted, put together as a sandwich, and screwed together with a power screwdriver. It weighed 85 pounds. We lugged it to UPS and Sarah claimed it was a “fabric wall-hanging,” which is technically true, I guess. It cost $136 to mail. The embarrassing thing was that there was — what were the odds? — a Fabric Arts guild member in line behind us, a friend of an acquaintance, who got all excited and interested at this enormous piece of supposed fabric arts being shipped off to Philadelphia, so Sarah kind of mumbled something vague and made her get-away…
Ivan Kreilkamp 