The Feather Gallery

One thing to say for building on a dry salt lake, no lost days to rain! We’ve been here for 6 weeks now and with only a couple of minor setbacks everything is right on schedule.

The interior is all but finished. The doors have to be fitted, and a whole heap of lights are going in over the next few days. We put in a bunch of solar cells in the ground about 40m from here more than enough solar energy out here.

I had the hangers made up by a good friend of mine who works in a specialist furniture factory. They’re well made, with a wire mesh behind a special fabric which can take a hook through it, but not leave a hole when the hook is removed! Added to that, it doesn’t give the impression of being fabric. Sounded ideal and indeed they are looking good as they go up.

This morning they lifted the walkway supports into place. I always wanted a high vantage point inside the gallery. Apart from somewhere to hang smaller painting, it’s a good spot to see the gallery as a whole.

The glaziers turned up a couple of days ago. They had heaps of trouble finding us. I don’t know… usually “just look for the building in the middle of the salt lake!” does the trick. I think they were expecting to see water or something. Then when they actually found the salt pan I got a call from Mark the glazier that went… “there’s nothing here you little f&*ker?” (he swears a lot) “no no, we’re here alright, are you following the signs to Dan’s Mound?” - “Yeah… F#%& man, we’ve been driving for 2 f’en days, if you’re not f ‘ en here … oh hang on”….

Ha! Their windshield was so dirty they had trouble seeing much of anything especially once they on the salt. I thought it was quite funny that a bunch of glaziers had trouble seeing out their windshield, but they didn’t seem to see the irony. To be honest I think it was a mirage was causing them to see nothing but salt, but I didn’t tell them that.

At least they can put glass up ok.

I found an amazing gigantic fossilized Nautilus shell in the mountain rocks around the lake when we were originally scouting around the area. I thought it would look amazing as a floor feature in the middle of the gallery. I checked first, apparently they are quite common, so there was no problem with using it in the gallery.

So it went in yesterday afternoon, sort of looks a bit drab at the moment, dust went everywhere when they were cutting it to size. I’ll give it a wash and polish just before the glazing goes on over the top. We’ll also put some feature lights in there to show it up at night.

This was another very exciting day. Once we got the crane in (which cost a fortune by the way) the roof structure was lifted into place. It’s good to see the overall shape with the roof up. I must admit we weren’t entirely sure how the roof tubes would go, what I mean to say is we weren’t sure how they would look. They look good on paper, but would they look good up in the air. Well I think they work well. The photo I took doesn’t really do them justice, when you’re actually inside the gallery, they look far more interesting.

It was a slow start at first, but after sorting out a bit of confusion, we’ve got the basic floor in. There is still the center show-piece section to go in, it’s quite a delicate stage and will have to wait until we get a few more helpers in.

Yesterday they completed the wall. Now we can all see the design really taking shape. Up until now, it’s been mainly in my head, at least the builders treat me with a bit more respect now.

I don’t think any of them have worked on something quite like it. You wouldn’t believe some of the fights we had early on when trying to convince some of these people around here that this was going to work.

Anyway, now we can start work on the interior. Oh, and it’s nice to get some shade now, gets a bit hot here during the day!

4 Days into construction and everything is going to plan.

As you can see, work has started on the wall. Everything else will sort of hang off the it, so it’s crucial to get the wall built right. I’m told it should only take another few days to complete it.

Yesterday the builders made the first marks on this salt-pan. The ground here is quite solid, so they didn’t have to go very deep.

It’s so exciting. Every morning I get out here very early to see how its going. I always end up fussing around, cleaning things up and sweep everywhere. It’s only a hole in the ground, but already I reckon it looks great!