Engineering Skills to Create a New Solo Show
In which I ask you to vote for best firefighter of 2024, and I talk about how my education as an engineer gave me real-world skills and helps me create a solo art show.
Before I get to the real post for this week. Can you please help a girl out and vote for my husband, Matt Meinhold, to name him the Best Firefighter of 2024 in Park City? You do have to include a valid email address, but you won’t get junk mail. Navigate to “In the Community” scroll to “Best Firefighter” and write in “Matt Meinhold, Station 38”. He’s getting close to retirement, and I would love to see him honored for all his amazing work here in this town for the last 19 years. Should you be so inclined, you can vote once a day until September 30th.
It’s fall, so I am in work mode. Every year for the last 8 years, I have been working on a show for Gallery MAR in Park City. Many of them solo shows. This year my solo show is on Friday, November 8th. It is the busiest I will be all year, the most focussed, and the most productive. As per usual, I also have another project I am working on, sometimes multiple, and in this case it is the 100 cold wax paintings. I also create an art calendar, and 50+ handmade ornaments. Despite the full schedule, the multiple paintings being created at once, the cramped studio with paintings stacked everywhere, and also cramming in every bike ride, lake session, hike, or dinner that I can, it feels good. I am working on things I care about.
If only I could keep this pace up all year, I say to myself in my head. Think of how much you would get done, I admonish. You would be so good if you painted that much all the time, I ponder. Shouldn’t you be able to crank out that much all the time, I ask?
No. I shouldn’t keep up that pace. No, I can’t crank out that much. No, I don’t want to work that hard. No, I don’t need to be that good, better, right, perfect, or more.
For the last 8 years, I have also gotten burned out by the time the holidays come around. Exhaustion will take hold, sleep will not be enough, I will lose all interest in creating, making, painting, and doing. And I don’t want to do that this year.
When I first started working on my new solo show this summer, I heard myself admonishing myself about my production schedule. I was already feeling behind (I wasn’t), and I thought I should be doing more (I was doing plenty). But this time, I said, “Woah friend. Let’s stop this before it gets further. You set your schedule already, and while slightly ambitious as it is, you can’t add more to it.” And both voices agreed. Stick to the schedule, you’re doing great, don’t do more. Just stick to the schedule.
Engineering Tools to Create a Production Schedule
I don’t know how other artists plan their time working on projects or leading up to shows, but I use my engineering brain and the tools I learned in school to help me do it. If I had my way, I would make everyone learn engineering, design thinking, and problem solving techniques. It’s a great way to tackle big problems, come up with creative and innovative solutions, then figure out a way to actually bring the solution to the real world. Understand the user, understand the problem, brainstorm solutions, test ideas, fine-tune. It’s iterative, forgiving, you learn as you go, and it’s doable.
The above is Stanford’s D.School model for design thinking, and while I didn’t attend that department, I did go through Stanford’s Civil & Engineering department, and really all the engineering schools, employ some version of this. What’s so useful about the process is that it breaks big problems up into small, little actionable steps and gives you a framework to do it. I really wish everyone learned this, even if they weren’t working on tech solutions. It applies to all areas of life.
And I use it in my art too. Now, I may not break it up and explicitly do each of these steps every time, but yea in some ways I do it consciously or unconsciously. I’m thinking about the audience, the problem, the ideas to do so, prototypes, and fine-tuning. I’m absolutely doing that with the cold wax paintings, and to a smaller degree, I do it with my shows.
The other engineering tool I use all the time in my work is Gantt Charts. This should be taught in high school, to everyone. Come up with another name for the technique if it’s too geeky, but please learn this skill. Basically, Gantt Charts are a scheduling tool to help you manage time, complete tasks, and arrive at a finished project by a due date. They’re especially helpful for projects that require multiple people/teams working on various elements of the project. There are all sorts of online solutions for this now - apps, websites, scheduling tools, Microsoft does it. Just try and imagine the organization it took to get all the teams working on time for the Mars Rover project to ensure they got that thing perfected and launched.
But Bridgette, you’re not launching a rocket to Mars. No, but this works for everything and if it’s good enough for NASA, it’s good enough for me. So, let’s say in March, I commit to a solo show and it’s due Friday, November 8th (that is the date of my actual show PS). At that time, I know I will need at minimum 18 paintings. Knowing that each painting takes a certain amount of time to create (I can do that because I have been doing this long enough that I can reasonably make that assumption, but the more unknowns you have, the more time you need to factor in). You know what, let’s turn this into algebra. I want show you how many days it will take to complete it on time. I love maths.
Days Needed =
(Number of Paintings x Days to Complete each Painting)
+ Vacation Days
+ Extra Wiggle Room
+ (Extra Paintings x Days to Complete)*
+ Days Gallery needs before show opens
*If I can get some extra paintings into the schedule, I will.I can’t show my math, because that means I would unveil trade secrets and how many days off I took. THEN. I make my schedule in my Google Calendar creating work blocks. I feel like I’m giving up some very important knowledge showing this to you, like I’ve let you into the inner sanctum. Please don’t use this knowledge against me. This was my work calendar for August.
I want to point out that I worked too much in August, which is clear because there are NO gaps in between those work blocks after we returned from our Black Hills road trip. I know I did too much, because on August 24th, when I was working in the studio at 9:00 pm, I realized that I needed a day off. And then on August 26th I was mostly a puddle of tears. But, I did take the 28th and 29th OFF, even though it wasn’t reflected in this calendar. So in truth, this is a BAD example. Don’t do this. But don’t worry, we’re gone for half of September on a real, honest-to-god vacation, so it looked too blank to show you.
ALWAYS FACTOR IN VACATION & DAYS OFF!!!!
Ok, what else do I need to tell you about engineering and planning skills? Factor in wiggle room, factor in time off, factor in coordinating with other people, give yourself more time than you need. Work backwards from the end date. And then stick to your schedule. The beauty of all this is that when you have a calendar like this, you have essentially done the hard part of planning, and then you only have to follow the plan. You’ve taken the guess work out, and you can merely plod along day to day doing your thing.
I get it that this might not work for everyone. Some of you will read this and go, “that’s insane. I could never, would never, why would you ever, do that?” To each their own I guess. Maybe it’s the left-brain in me, maybe it was my education, maybe it was the ability to take the guess work out of it and have a plan, maybe it’s being a Generator in Human Design, who knows.
The above video has nothing to do with my art, but I had this incredible experience with this coyote the other day while out for a hike.
Regardless, even if you hate this idea, I bet it will seep in just a little bit and next time you have a big project, you’ll think “How long do I actually need to complete this?” And you might, just might, work backwards, factoring in vacation days and wiggle room, to come up with a day when you should start. And that might give you some breathing room. OR it might tell you that day has long since passed and this project is insane, I’ll never get it done under these conditions or with these requirements. If that’s the case, think about how can you change it up to make it easier and still get it done? Because I, for one, am no longer willing to sacrifice sleep, fun, or my mental health to get an extra painting done.
So now you’re wondering, when did I start working on the show?
Mid-July. It takes at least 3 months for me to create a solo show. Just don’t let me say yes to any more projects.