Snugly sat against brown packing paper and rolls upon rolls of bubble wrap in the sedan of Hillyer Art Space’s Gallery Director, we (two Gallery Interns and a Gallery Director (don’t worry, this isn’t the start of a terrible joke)) headed to the warehouse in Baltimore where International Arts & Artists stores their artworks. Our mission: to prepare four Leonard Cave works for shipping.
Who was Leonard Cave? Lenny was a local D.C. sculptor and leader of an artistic community. He was born in South Carolina, the third of four brothers. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Maryland, and after he completed his graduate work, became a professor at Georgetown University. After seven years of holding a position as an adjunct professor, he started teaching for public school districts in the DMV. He even established an Academy of Commercial and Fine Art for the Montgomery County School District. In addition to teaching, in 1984 Lenny founded and ensured the stability of the Washington Sculptors Guild, an organization dedicated to forging a space for sculpture and sculptors in the DC community. Though a southern boy at heart, Lenny helped to forge the DMV artistic and sculptural community that thrives today.
Upon his death in 2006, Hillyer Art Space and its parent organization IA&A, the president of which was a close personal friend of Lenny’s, were honored to be willed several of Lenny’s sculptures. Having only received them earlier in 2013, we are been planning to hold an event during Fall 2013 in order to offer the collection up for public sale. In the meantime, however, auction galleries in New Orleans requested a few of his pieces to be put up for auction. Happy to bring Lenny and his legacy back to the south, we planned a trip to our storage unit.
We needed to ensure the works would not be damaged in the drive to New Orleans (We shipped works 2, 12, 15, and 16. Those plus his other works can be found here). This meant we needed to bring out the big guns. And by guns, I of course mean loads of bubble wrap, packing tape, duct tape, and packing paper alongside other tools (like our new favorite sharpie, the magnum, which we didn’t even know was a thing until last Thursday). With all of that, we felt prepared enough to face the tall stacks and infinite corridors of CDS logistics. We rode on, arriving just outside of Baltimore in just over an hour.
After locating and cataloging each of Lenny’s sculptures, we enlisted the aid of the warehouse workers who operate the forklifts (you know, those vehicles on which, regrettably, we weren’t permitted to play) to carefully maneuver the pieces we needed.
As we watched, eager to get our hands on these large wooden sculptures, we became nostalgic and thought back to earlier months when we and Lenny were first becoming acquainted. So we made sure that we took photos with these wooden legacies of Lenny. We couldn’t help but appreciate the unique relationship Lenny has with HAS, but like a parent sending her child away from home, we were glad to be sending Lenny off into the world to be better appreciated.
After uncovering the sculptures from plastic wrapping meant to protect from accumulating dust layers, we re-wrapped them in paper and bubble wrap, cardboard corners and packing tape. Packing the smaller pieces in a box, we secured the sculptures in place by using smaller cardboard boxes, more packing tape, and more bubble wrap as buffer.
(You should know that the temptation to pop all of those bubbles was strong, but we triumphantly resisted.)
Though we didn’t get to pop the bubbles, we were able to put some play to use. Our Director, Sam, put to good use her knowledge of plastic wrap. Awkwardly twisting and winding our way around these large sculptures with various protrusions was a task, but one that we successfully accomplished.
After washing the dirt from our hands and knees, and after removing residual tape from places we didn’t even know we had it, we were ready to leave. Leaving the packages to be picked up by the shipping company the following morning (which we were notified safely arrived in New Orleans earlier this week), we said a temporary farewell to Lenny.
Until next time, Mr. Cave.
