The Beauty of A Gallery

Bank Left Gallery

100 S Bridge Street, Palouse, WA

Type of work exhibited: Sculpture, painting, ceramic, fabric, 

decoration, furniture, glass, postcard, earring

Square footage of exhibit space: 800 sq.ft

My friends and I visited an art gallery in Palouse during our Spring break to get some inspirations on how to design an efficient and appealing gallery space. They have a wide range of art works. Some of them displayed in cabinets while some of them are placed on the top of tables. 

I realized that they tried to put artworks with similar styles together to create a harmony and unity. The yellow and orange walls in this smaller room indicate that we are entering a different space.

They also utilize pedestals and cases to show the art works. I found that pedestals is really desirable for sculpture while those small show cases are more suitable for smaller objects.The overall environmental color is clam blue-green because of the carpet. The white clean walls help visitors concentrate on the beauty of the artworks.

There is a hanging device that used to hang the doll as we can see on the right side of the picture.We discovered that there is an obvious difference between the upper part and the lower part of the wall which to me is a little distracting. The spot light on the wall lightening up particular artwork is really effective. I believe they help catch people's attention and make the artwork even more charming and valuable.

The glass show case here is somewhat not as bright as other displays but it open up the space and let people focus on the artwork. It might because the lack of spot light that let me feel this area is not as important as other area. I think it might be better if they can install some lights inside the glass cases or maybe hang some spot lights on the wall.

The ceiling is very unique and represent the architectural style of the old era. I felt that the square pattern on each of the panel echo with the paintings within the frames. The gallery is lightened up by an ideal amount of natural light and therefore I did not pay much attention on the artificial lighting features. I guess the gallery will be darker during the night due to limited amount of artificial lighting. However, consider the opening hours the gallery has, they might not require a great amount of lighting.

 

I like how the paintings are arranged and I think the smaller paintings direct people and introduce the larger paintings above. Our eye will follow the display unconsciously.

The site visit gave me a basic idea on how to arrange the artworks in a gallery space and how to utilize natural light and spot light. Though the gallery is pretty small and has limited amount of artworks, I learned from it and started to think about a successful gallery.

Impaired Vision Experience

     We got a chance to experience vision impaired. We use plastic bag, sunglasses with Vaseline applied on the inside, and vision simulator tool to perform this activity. When I looked through the plastic bag, I immediately feel that the entire world is blurry and I am not confident that I can walk by myself because there are several wrinkles on the plastic bags that cause the vision even blurry. When I looked through the layers and read a newspaper, I founded that I can barely read the big title but for the rest of the newspaper, I can't recognize at all. We then fold the bag in half to experience the vision through four layers of plastic. I already feel the blurry through two layers because I am slightly near-sighted so four layers of plastic is extremely hard for me.

     The vision simulator tool is actually fun because I found I can see through it without too many difficulties except for the bottom one. The bottom one will make me be a real blind. There are two vision that seems to tell us the difference between  the white part of our eye and pupilla. I thought the pupilla is how we can actually see because when I look trough the third one, I need to turn my eye to see the surrounding.
     After experiencing the impaired vision through plastic bag, I put on the pair of sunglasses which is already apply a thin layer of Vaseline inside the glasses and walk through the CUB. I can feel that there are people walking toward me and I am able to walk without others' help. However, I only have the vision of approximately 15' so I need to pay more attention to the surrounding area. I think I walker a little bit slower than normal because I am afraid of being vision impaired but I finally made myself in front of the elevator. It is kind of fun because other people have no idea that the sunglasses I wore is decreasing my vision ability. I then feel comfortable and push the bottom and go to the down stair.

     I tried to use the ATM machine and figured out the location of the card swipe and key-paid. I am not familiar with the ATM machine so it took me some time to figure out where the card swipe and key-paid is. It is frustrating because there are other device similar to card swipe and I can't see the numbers one the keyboard.
    Next, I went through the library from CUB and noticed that there are a divider between the door accessing to the library. I believe it is a potential danger to people with impaired vision. The floor underneath is changing and thus I was able to realize that I am entering a different space. There are black strips on the edges of each stairs which is really helpful to identify. This is perhaps the biggest discovery of the impaired vision experience. I figured out that stairs in the outdoor are usually having no distinguishable strips but some of them acquire caved strips. Both caved strips and black strips play an important role for people with impaired vision and also beneficial to add resistances to prevent slippery.