Sometimes it’s the smallest, mineal, tasks that you can learn the biggest lessons from. The other week, I was doing one of the most tedious tasks associated with running an Art space, spackling, repairing, and painting the literal thousands of tiny screw, nail, and tack holes in the gallery wall.
The other week I found myself repairing, spackling, and painting (literally) 1000s of little screw, nail, and tack holes in an Art Gallery wall. (Ah the things you find yourself doing on a Wednesday evening when you work/live in an Art gallery)
I will say there is a surprisingly weird zen-like meditative state one gets in after about the 100th hole you fix. But still… it is a tedious task.
Anyways, after about 3hours of filling holes, the owner of the gallery says to me,
“I used to be crazy about repairing and fixing the walls. Used to do it every 6weeks. It would drive me insane to see those little holes in the walls, and even crazier to think what people would think about us when they would see the holes. That was, Until I went to the MET [New York Metropolitan Museum of Art] and saw their walls. They only repair their walls once a season/quarter. And they’re the MET!”
And it’s true, unless you go to the MET on a perfect day, you’ll see a surprising amount of little holes and marks on their beautiful white walls. But nobody complains, and really, I bet no one even really notices them (I didn’t until someone pointed it out to me). And that’s because people go to the MET to see the Art on the walls, not the walls themselves.
But I think that’s what’s actually beautiful about the holes in the MET walls. We can sometimes be so distracted about aiming for (and being perceived as) perfect. Get so caught up in what people might think of us if we aren’t perfect. We can be so worried about the little things, when sometimes (most of the of time), you just gotta let the Art (whatever that art may be) speak for itself (and know, it’ll do its job).
Now obviously, if I went into the MET and saw big hammer holes, a bunch of pencil marks, and chipped paint on the walls, I (and most of their clientele) would be taken aback and might think about the MET a little differently.
From “Creative Quick Takes” circa 2020