The Gallery Wall: Memoir in Frames

An engaging and informative article in Veranda magazine titled ‘Are Gallery Walls Still in Style? Here’s What Designers Say’ (Rebecca R. Norris, August 10, 2023) inspires me to a fuller consideration of such. One of the designers quoted in the article notes, “A well-considered gallery wall can read like a book and…narrate a story.” There are innumerable ways to style a wall or walls in our rooms and so, this will be one of several posts on the topic. This post will consider the ways a gallery wall can be a visual memoir representative of a life story.

When moving to the Texas Hill Country we filled a van with framed pieces for the walls we wanted to handle ourselves. Each piece had been cleaned and restored by me and wrapped in miles of bubble wrap and stretch film. Each piece had a numbered tag fastened to the outside; the numbers corresponding to the area where the piece would hang. Life continues to engage us and ideas continue to flow, so we find despite all the pre-planning we may still hang and rehang our pictures. This morning while making coffee, an idea occurred and picture hanging basket in hand, the coffee is left dripping through the filter.

A gallery wall which seems to tell the story of a life is in Charlotte Moss Decorates: The Art of Creating Elegant and Inspired Rooms. She describes the pictures surrounding the desk as “Masses of watercolors, paintings, and etchings in mis-matched frames…pictures arranged with a kind of orderly disorder that is more lively than laboring to make the display strictly symmetrical.”

Designer Alfredo Paredes’ gallery wall dramatically extends to the floor where pieces are propped as if waiting to be hung.

This wall in the stable block guest quarters of Ven House in Somerset includes a silhouette of a dog’s head, perhaps that of a beloved family pet. (House and Garden, 8-14-23)

Antiques dealer Bill Gardner has a gallery wall filled with his collection of Mexican pottery.  Architect Jeremy Corkern’s New Orleans kitchen has a nook filled with works by artist Andrew LeMar who is known for his paintings of prominent Louisianians.  These walls also tell the story of a life or lives.

Prior to taking up a new residence it’s helpful to record your developing ideas in words, clippings, and sketches in a journal dedicated to this purpose. The best are small enough to fit inside a handbag or the pocket of your jogging pants; you never know when an idea will occur. This photo of the desk of art dealer Patrick Perrin and the gallery wall above served as the inspiration for the wall above my husband’s desk in our studio.

We began our own gallery wall hanging the pieces starting in the center with the charcoal sketch and then working our way out and up. There was much discussion and pauses to stand back and consider the effect. Since then, we have added pieces one at a time moving toward the ceiling and to the left and right walls. The desk is at one end of the room. As we continue to add to the wall it is fascinating to consider what is there, what memories it evokes for us and what stories it helps us tell.

The life drawing is by artist, Olga Porter. We purchased it during one of her early shows, then held in the building where we both lived. The sketch is charcoal on newsprint and as such is rather fragile. We cherish it for its delicacy of line and movement. The life drawing, made in a few moments is the only one like it we have seen in her body of work.

We bought this painting in a gallery in Flagstaff, Arizona. My husband and his brothers rented a house there and the family met to spend time together and to visit the Grand Canyon. We got up very early on the first morning and drove to the canyon alone. We sat on the edge of the canyon as the sun rose and the clouds began to take shape on the canyon floor. To this day, the sight of the shadows of the clouds moving over the bottom of the canyon continues to fascinate me.

This is a photogravure my husband made of the view down Main Street on a foggy morning in Houston. He wasn’t satisfied with the image and put it in his pile to think about and revise. It is one of my favorites and has a key place in our life story gallery wall.

The large piece in this photo is a map of the Southern Hemisphere purchased at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The map was in the drastically reduced bin which enabled me to have it framed in this delicate gilded wood and give it to my husband as a surprise. It used to hang at the foot of our “reading couch” and you could look up to rest your eyes and imagine yourself on a voyage to the Southern Hemisphere. The precise grid of lines and circular shape look well with the other pieces on our gallery wall.

The dry point print of the angel wing shell is one I made when my husband and I were taking a printmaking course together.  You rarely find an intact angel wing shell on the beach. During a walk on the West Beach of Galveston Island on Christmas morning we discovered this shell and dozens of others like it.

The small, embroidered bag may have been an evening bag or a bag to hold threads or ribbons. I found it in a vintage shop in Fredericksburg, Texas. It reminds me of the beaded evening bags I have belonging to my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  Too delicate to use, they are still a part of my life and something to look at and cherish.

The bottom piece in this photo is a dry point after a work by Picasso made to demonstrate how various types of lines print on an art press. We found this buried in one of our portfolios and thought it would be fascinating next to the middle piece which is a photogravure of a designer’s dress shop in the French Quarter in New Orleans and the top piece which is a tiny fashion sketch of mine. Each of them features a body of sorts; each in a different media, yet they complement one another.

Gallery walls such as these develop over time as we live and collect things of interest, and then frame them because they are important to us. As we arrange these bits and pieces of our lives on the walls home becomes a joyful personal space telling our stories.  If you haven’t already done so, you may want to begin gathering pieces for your own walls. This photo is one of several pages from a book of illustrations of moths and butterflies purchased in a vintage shop in Comfort, Texas. Look for a future post on rooms with thematic gallery walls!