DIVIDE and CONQUER...

...UNINTERESTING, INCORRECT, NON HARMONIOUS SPACE.

Some years ago in my past life, in the United States, I had the good fortune of being granted many challenging, fun and wonderful creative projects, by my good friend Gary Chulkins, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had his offices over the years in his home and/or in a commericial office building. His profession is massage therapy and accupuncture.

Often, but not always, we would work out a barter for services. Since I needed treatments somewhat regularily for my prior years of conducting my sport life as if I would live forever, ignoring the possibility of any negative future body responses from the punishment of my intence sport efforts, as if it would never happen))). Well, as I found out soon enough, as many of us do, that there is a price to later pay for such exhuberence, physically speaking. So I needed his special, rare friendship greatly, for many reasons... including his skillful and popular treatments. My close friend Gary, was therapeutic in many ways. We had and have a holistic friendship and we have been good for each other for many years, especially in a mind/body/soul manner.

So one day, don't remember the date, we began to survey, on site, his new location and talked about his plans for his new office layout, space usage etc. It began to promptly surface, an idea, to create some privacy in an open space for his clients and for his needed client focus, concentration during his treatment process. Although there was as well, a room with a door of course for client treatments already in place, he needed another area for private treatments. However he didn't want to build any permanent walls to create such a space that would ensure privacy space for the overflow of clients to have their important treatments.

Quickly enough we came up with the idea of creating some room dividers, portable and attractive, as well thematic and in harmony with the atmosphere he was envisioning and creating. He already had some of my landscape pastel paintings on the walls that were well liked by him....and his clients. But I felt it was important to be as opportunistic as possible in this project to convey the nature and functions of his healing business in the imagery of these room divider panels.

This discussion took place not long before I was planning to move to the state of New Mexico to live and work with some New Mexico artist friends. He approved quickly my presentations of the designs some weeks after our first meeting for these panels/dividers. But some logistical challenges needed to be addressed as to how to create them and safely ship the finished designs from my friend's studio in New Mexico to Gary's office. We worked that out nicely. I suggested that I create these interesting room dividers on canvas, hand painted as per the designs, and ship the rolled canvas designs/paintings to his office a couple of months or less later. He agreed. Also he said he could have the frames for the completed canvases made on site, with a base support in wood, as well, for each panel. There would be upon completion 5-6 panels that could optionally face inward/outward as he arranged, to his liking.

After receiving the finished canvas panels Gary found himself overloaded with his client load and so it took some time for him to get around to having the frames for the canvas room dividers build. But eventually the dividers were completed and in place. He was quite happy with the results and their functionality.

Ok, there is my overview story of the evolution of a need for a customer space problem to be solved creatively and beneficially. Objective met.

So if you are interested in having some original room dividers created for your home or office space please write me and we can discuss what is possible. Of course I can email you any designs for your review and later can ship them, the room divider paintings, to you from Colombia, my new location of life and living. Actually various commissioned artwork can usually be created from my studio here.

To view more of Gary's room divider panels see my art website gallery, titled "Murals", at www.rickcittacreative.com

Thanks for reading my project story. Hope you enjoyed the story and have been stimulated by, entertained perhaps, by this blog posting. I welcome and encourage any of your comments. Thank you and have a great day!