This week I am in the Aspen Ice Garden in Aspen Colorado. With the help of a couple
dozen guys - We’re going to take this hockey rink and turn it into a luxury modern art
fair and back again. My name is Nicholas Johnson and this is the
space warehouse.
Im an art fair producer. Im on small, specialized art fair production team; my title is lighting
division manager. (you may have noticed the piles of truss and baskets full of lights
at the warehouse in previous videos - they are my domain.)
Its generally my job to run a team of guys and girls, putting up and electrifying these
long runs of aluminum truss that hold up spot lights that shed some concentrated light onto
paintings and sculptures at these events all over the country. But beyond that, our “Space
Crew” are the guys who are called on to solve any and all problems for the fancy art
world folks.
Sometimes thats installing giant sculptures, sometimes figuring out how to host live online
interviews with people who are in different countries. In Aspen, I end up playing sound
guy for a couple of panel discussions on the main floor.
The shows we produce take place everywhere from an airplane hangar in Santa Monica, a
pier downtown Chicago - to a variety of venues in New York city; we even do a fair ON south
beach in Miami where we level the sand and construct a climate controlled tent the size
of a home depot, complete with a restaurant and a shipping dock!!
But today, its Aspen. A tiny little wonderland in the mountains of Colorado. Its got that
small town for multi-millionaires feel to it.
The Aspen show is the smallest art fair we do each year. Just thirty galleries, collected
inside a hockey rink.
Months after the initial planning and design of the floor, Sarah and Grace chalk out where
the walls will be built, while I run power distro cables from the main 100amp panel.
I design a power map to evenly spread out electricity to power all the lights and plugs
for the galleries, and then drag out these heavy cords behind the walls.
For the most part its just going to be LED lights and people charging phones and computers,
but you never know when some clever gallery is going to hide a coffee maker or a microwave
in their closet - so we make sure there are breakers distributed pretty evenly throughout
the floor.
Once the plan is laid and handed out, the wall crew gets to work putting up a little
neighborhood of 10 foot tall booths and hallways so that when youre walking around the fair,
you forget that youre in a small town ice rink.
The aspen show is a lot more open than a lot of the other shows, despite its small size.
This show focuses more on a small number of motivated buyers, rather than a huge number
of regular members of the public like in Miami, Chicago or New York does.
After the walls are up, the painters get to work taping and painting to hide the seams
and the and truss crew moves in to prepare to light up the artwork.
Every wall needs light, and every light needs a track - so this truss acts as an electrical
network above the floor to deliver power to the booths.
This whole process only really takes about a day and then in come the installation teams.
Some galleries will hang their own artwork if their scrappy - but in Aspen this year
there were quite a few really big and some really expensive pieces of art (Picasso? This
guy created his own shade of blue?) - this wall sized painting was going for 20 million
dollars! (it didnt sell). Therefore, in come the art handlers.
The art handler is an expert at blue tape, the french cleat, a correct viewing height
and style! The Art handler is a creature unique to all genres and styles and personalities
otherwise known in this world. Sometimes good at simple math; usually reasonably polite,
and always able to get the job done one way or another.
After the walls go up, the lights come on, the art is hung and the bubble wrap, brown
paper and the smell of all natural bio friendly deodorant has cleared the air - its time to
open the fair to the public.
Its these conversations that lead to the funding for all the trucks to bring in all the walls.
These people decorating their homes allow for the hundreds of flights and airBNB rentals;
the trips to starbucks and bowling with the crew after the build. These patrons money
pays for the warehouses to store light bulbs and pallet jacks and the thousands of extension
cords necessary to make the whole thing come to life. Not to mention the painters and sculptures,
the security guards and cleaning crews, the art handlers and autocad designers and forklift
operators and catering staff.
And me. So thank you, millionaire - Im glad you like that color so I can keep traveling
around and. Im happy you want to support the artists so that I have this warehouse to mess
around in on my free time at home. Please, keep filling your houses and condos with beautiful
paintings so I can keep making youtube videos.
Now on to the next one - next up; the armor show in New York City! But first, I made Joey
do some olympic events to see how slow and weak a “regular guy” is when compared
to an elite athlete. Goodbye.