The Gallery

 

  We drove to Teresa's sister Cindy's gallery in Annapolis to help out in whatever way we could. I've been retired nine years, but Cindy who is my age, is still running the show. She must like it. I know from personal experience that as the years pile up, so does the work. Cindy grew up on the farm along with Teresa and neither of them is afraid of hard work, but still, the work piles up.

  Cindy's two daughters have been trying to help. Elizabeth, the older, lives in western New York State. Abigail lives in Delaware 74 miles distant from the gallery. We told Abigail we'd be happy to stop at her place on our way to a family visit to Massachusetts to help out. She signed us up to do inventory in the gallery.

  We arrived at Abigail's during the Memorial Day weekend. Abigail said our first full day, Sunday, would be a family fun day. Cindy was staying with Abigail for the holiday and she rode along with Abigail's husband John and sons Max (15) and Roman (12) to the nearby town of Chesapeake City, MD. Abigail and John had their first house in Chesapeake City and started their family there.

   Chesapeake City is on the C&D Canal which connects the Delaware River with Chesapeake Bay. It's become a tourist town and we had lunch there and checked out the sites. Next day, Monday was the holiday so we stayed at Abigail's and strategized our future projects and listened to Cindy talk about her plans for the future. Selling art is a unique business. She's been successful at it for over fifty years but it can have its challenges. Cindy says Covid changed everything.

  On Tuesday morning we drove to Annapolis, crossing the four mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge, past the Naval Academy, past the Maryland State House which was the nation's capital for a year and where the Treaty of Paris was ratified officially ending the Revolutionary War. We continued down Main Street to the gallery.

  Annapolis is a tourist town. This time of year parking is difficult. If you do find a spot you have to pay to park.  Abigail dropped us all off and drove to a parking garage a few blocks away where Cindy pays by the month. Artists are often extravagant; gallery owners tend to be thrifty.

  After a discussion it was decided staff was better equipped to do the inventory of artwork in the second floor storage area.  What was really needed was someone to organize the approach to the artwork. Things not needed in the gallery had been placed out of sight on the stairway. We had a good supply of trash bags and after checking with Cindy or Abigail, a lot of stuff went in the trash. We felt like the Kondo twins.

  After vacuuming the plaster flakes that had fallen from the ceiling (the building is 150 years old) the stairway looked inviting. There had been a business office on the second floor before Cindy bought the building. There was a non-functioning bathroom at the top of the stairs. What better place to store miscellaneous stuff destined for the dump? Actually there was some good stuff there; it just needed to be organized. We started a Home Depot list: Item1. Storage unit.

  Abigail pointed out the window at a tree growing in the narrow blind alley between Cindy's building and the building next door. The tree produced seed pods that fell on the flat portion of the roof and plugged the drains.  We couldn't just cut down the tree but with a pole saw we could remove lots of branches. Item 2. Pole saw.

  Time to go to Home Depot. On the way we stopped at Cindy's other gallery in Severna Park. This smaller free-standing gallery sells some art, but its main purpose is to frame all the jobs the Annapolis gallery takes in. 

  We just happened to have a framing job on hand. We had gotten a painting for our wedding fifty years ago and along the line it had gone into our own storage. Our son Joe had asked for it so we had wrapped it up and brought it along. Abigail and Cindy were curious to see the painting and Cindy was aghast at the wrinkled matting and torn backing.  Cindy said she wanted to repair the piece which is what she and Sarah at the frame shop did while Abigail and I went to Home Depot. One storage unit and one pole saw later, we returned to find the beautifully rehabilitated painting.

Restored 

  We dropped Cindy at her home, dropped our new items at the gallery and drove home to Abigail's. It doesn't sound like we did a lot, but just getting started is a major hurdle. On Wednesday it was back to the gallery. Teresa put the storage unit together and filled it up, then started organizing the small room at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile I put the pole saw together and Abigail and I crawled out a window onto the flat roof. We put cardboard down to protect the rubbery roofing from our step ladder and from the falling branches.

  The little chain saw on the pole did a good job cutting branches off the tree. The pole was ten feet long and I could add a few more feet with the stepladder while Abigail steadied the ladder. A few branches fell into the narrow alley between the buildings. Should we try to get them? 

  These buildings fit together like badly cut puzzle pieces. We were on the backside of the gallery. I could look down into one neighbor’s kitchen and up to another's living room. It was a Dickensian jumble. Over it all loomed the statehouse where the Founding Fathers had worked their magic long before our tree had started growing. Abigail looked into the dark alley, thought a bit, and said the branches would mulch down, so we left them alone.

  As I was collecting the branches on the roof it started raining. I was not prepared for rain and climbed back in the window and helped Teresa till the rain let up. I eventually filled five big garbage bags with branches and leaves and also opened the gutter drains while I was out there. Teresa filled four trash bags in her organizing. One of the gallery employees was so delighted with our progress she went out and bought us ice cream. We would have liked to stay longer but we had things to do up in Massachusetts where the Revolution got its start.

Up on the roof