I spent some time yesterday unpacking the prints for the 2009 CPA Juried Exhibition. Many people brought their prints to the Center, so they weren’t hard to unwrap. The prints that were shipped were a different story. Everyone packed their prints well enough to survive the rigors of UPS; there was no damage. Some of the boxes turned into big bulky puzzles as I struggled to extract the prints. Some advice to those people who want to make it easier on the people at the gallery:
- Forget the Styrofoam peanuts. They get all over the floor and stick to everything in sight. The bags of air serve the same purpose and are much easier to deal with, and they’re easy to recycle.
- Bubble wrap is good. Bubble wrap is even better if it’s not taped at every seam and then taped again just to make sure.
- One photographer wrote “Open Here” on the outside of the box and drew an arrow to the one seam that would release the contents. My gratitude knows no bounds.
- Taking a refrigerator carton and wrapping it around and around the print until it’s six inches thick is just plain cruel.
- If you’re going to double-wrap the print, try not to tape the outside and inside wrappings together.
For all the grumpiness inherent in the above remarks, I enjoyed the process. For each package, no matter how big the struggle, at the end of it I got to see a great image.
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