The World We Knew Is Gone - Show.
I knew after starting this project that I wanted to premiere it somewhere in Fort Worth, but didn’t know for sure where or when. So I started reaching out to galleries to gauge interest. The one that made the most sense was the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. After spending months trying to get a response from the gallery manager, a friend finally introduced me to him at an art reception, and we spoke about my idea for the show.
Initially he offered me the back gallery, which is a huge open area, normally meant for sculptures. I didn’t want to turn down the opportunity, but I was struggling to figure out a way to make use of so much open space, even thinking about grabbing a bunch of dirt from one of the deserts to put on the floor of the gallery with the spacesuit posed mid-step in the middle of the room with a trail of footprints behind it. Fortunately before I filled my car to the brim with red dirt, I got a call from the gallery manager that he misspoke and wanted to meet up again.
He offered me three gallery rooms for my first solo show. I have been going to the Fort Worth Community Arts Center since I was a kid, and had been going regularly to every art reception there since I moved back to Fort Worth in 2016 and got heavily involved in the art scene. I had never seen anyone get more than 2 rooms for their show, so I was excited to have the opportunity, but also realized that was going to be a lot of wall space to fill.
One thing I knew for sure was that I wanted the prints to be huge, to capture the grandeur and sense of scale from the landscapes I had photographed, and the insignificance of the astronaut. Finding a place to print that big wasn’t going to be easy, and it especially wasn’t going to be easy finding a place with the quality I was looking for. That’s why I knew I had to go to Signature Image in Fort Worth. Joey Sigler, who runs the shop, had done some last minute prints for me before a show, and I was impressed by his attention to detail and expertise.
I knew I wanted a tooth-y paper with a good amount of texture, but not so much to take attention away from the photo itself. I also knew I wanted deep, rich, vibrant colors for each photo. Joey recommended a watercolor paper which would soak up the ink, providing exactly the look I was after. He spent the majority of the week printing 27 of the images and painstakingly going over each detail looking for imperfections.
Once I got the prints to the gallery to install the work, just a week before the show’s opening, I realized I wouldn’t be able to hang the photos the way I had hoped. Each print was already so expensive due to the size, there was no way I’d be able to afford giant frames for each of them. I thought I’d be able to clip the prints up as I had done with a similar photo once before, but the way they sagged didn’t look as professional as I wanted. Joey had mentioned the possibility of drymounting them to foamcore to give them a solid / sturdy surface. It was a lot to ask for him to drymount all 27 images (and print 2 more once I realized there was still empty wall space to fill), but thankfully he was up to the task. There’s no way I would have been able to put the show together as quick and beautifully as I did without Joey’s help. Can’t say enough nice things about the guy and his work.
Another trick to work out for the show was how to show the short film that went with it. Initially I had planned on using my projector, but once I got ready to install the show and saw how much light spilled around the room, there would have been no way to show the film the way I wanted without glare. I knew I wanted it to appear as large as possible, which meant I wouldn’t be able to use my TV from home. So what I did was I rented a truck from Lowe’s, then bought the biggest TV I could afford at Costco. Had to get the gallery staff to help me carry the enormous TV into the building then rush to return the truck back to Lowe’s. Took a few hands to mount the TV onto the wall, and some technical difficulties to work out in order to get my speaker to work, but in the end I had an 82” 4K TV to play the film on a Sonos Beam speaker.
(Fun Fact: You can just return TV’s after shows. I was surprised but how much of the gallery staff has never thought of that).
The last couple tricks to figure out with the show were to create the atmosphere / ambiance I wanted. Ideally, the photos would be in a pitch black room with tight beam spotlights on each photo with the playlist I made for the series playing throughout the rooms. Unfortunately there was no way I could paint all the walls black, but I could do something about the lights. After the gallery workers hung up all the prints the way I’d arranged them, I positioned all the lights so that they’d be properly placed, centered on each print. But the lights provided were floodlights, filling the entire room with even light. I went to Lowe’s and bought a bunch of my own bulbs so that they’d have the tightest beam possible, making the space feel darker and more isolating, while also directing all attention to the prints and nothing else.
I also bought a couple of speakers, a small mp3 player, and extension cables so that I could upload the playlist onto the mp3 player and have it play on loop in the two rooms without the TV. The music is mostly ethereal sci-fi scores that I would listen to before each shoot to get in the calm and isolated headspace of being alone on another planet.
The final detail to the show was that I wanted to include the spacesuit itself. My roomate, Natalie Price, helped me to create a duct tape dummy so that I could display the suit. It involved getting some cheap pants and a long sleeve shirt then wrapping multiple rolls of duct tape tightly around me to create a mannequin that’s exactly my size, then cutting the duct tape off me and taping it back together. Certainly a ridiculous process, but since the suit is meant to be worn skintight, it definitely worked to create a good replica of what it looks like when I wear the suit.
The first thing you see as you enter the show.
The hallway in the first gallery room.
The artist statement, along with a view of all three rooms.
The corner of the second room.
The second and third rooms.
The third room, looking into the second room.
The third room, including the spacesuit itself.
Me & Penny Halcyon.
Me & Kendall McCrae.
Me & my mom.
The show premiered on October 4th, 2019 at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. I was so worried that after all that time, expense, and hard work that hardly anyone would make it out to see the show. But I was so happy and thrilled to see so many of my friends show up to check out the show. My mom even surprised me by driving all the way up from Houston without my knowing just so she could see the show (and got to meet a lot of my friends). So many dear friends, fellow artists, art lovers, clients, and oddly enough ex-girlfriends came to see the show, both from Fort Worth and all over the metroplex.
I spent most of that night telling folks stories about the project that I hadn’t yet shared and talking about space travel. It was a really great night, and a satisfying conclusion to the project. Over the next few weeks I’d make trips to the gallery to meet up with friends that had missed the opening reception and wanted a personal tour of the show. It stayed up for a month (though I heard from multiple people working at the gallery that they wished it could stay up longer).
Dallas Observer wrote an article about the show titled “Fort Worth Artist Wesley Kirk Overcame Heartbreak by Wearing a Spacesuit in the Desert”. A couple months later, Fort Worth Weekly put Vision & Verve on the cover, where they also mentioned the show.
It means so much to me how much everyone cared about the project, bought prints, and expressed interest in the work and what it means. This was the most ambitious project I have ever attempted, and in a lot of ways the most personal one. I sincerely want to thank everyone for taking the time to check out this project. I hope you’ve enjoyed The World We Knew Is Gone.
