Everyone loves a good gallery wall, right?  They are fun, frustrating, exhausting and challenging all at the same time. I wanted to infuse this house with local art and really layer in unique pieces. I collaborated with local Marni Katz to curate a selection of pieces that would work throughout this entire home. Fun fact? Marni and friends ended up producing a bunch of pieces on this wall!!!

Another fun fact?  My marriage survived this gallery wall being hung.  Yup. Nothing challenges a relationship like hanging a gallery wall together! He was a good sport and I am VERY thankful I just got to be creative director and not the installer.

A gallery wall filled with mix media pieces, charcoal drawings and oil paintings anchor the largest wall in the room.
A gallery wall filled with mix media pieces, charcoal drawings and oil paintings anchor the largest wall in the room.

How did we start this wall? Honestly – with options. Though I laid it all out in CAD and sketching it to figure out the right mixing of scale sometimes once you start hanging and see how things project, how spacing looks different in real life etc etc you make some changes. So in this case we went for the theory of more options is better. Marni showed up with a car filled with art, Emily from my team had driven all over the state picking up as well and we finally had everything unpacked, spread out and ready to go.

Then I always start with laying out the gallery wall on the floor in the space. We measure out the ideal wall space for coverage and then literally tape it out. Having a place to lay it all out and really work with it, tweaking, moving, shifting etc etc is really important. You start laying it out, feel great and then get towards the end and it looks unbalanced. Then you start all over again!  If you look real close you can see some very cool mixed media pieces Marni made that I love – can you see the ping pong balls???!

Once everything is laid out, spacing is figured out you just need to get started. Literally start with the first one and then start measuring from there. These walls where every space isn’t exactly the same is particularly stressful. But sometimes you just need to go with the Wabi-sabi of it all – acceptance of imperfection!

Warning for all – a gallery wall is so much harder than it looks! Here we’re the first to admit that being open to not everything having the same spacing will make your life so much easier. AND if your doing a gallery wall with your significant other – perhaps save a marriage – Ha!!

I just thought I’d take a moment to remind you what the space looked like before and then some during shots. It’s amazing how much better it looked with even just part of the walls down!

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