Gallery Highlights
Why should artists prefer the BLAK SAGE Gallery of Fine Art to exhibit their work?
Lighting And Atmosphere
From a purely technical standpoint, the gallery is extremely well lit.
Here are the particulars on the gallery's lighting specifications and capabilities.
Starting with the lights mounted to the ceiling: There are six 250-Watt, Metal Halide lamps that are assigned to two separate circuits. All six can be on at once or just lamps 1, 3, and, 5 or lamps 2, 4, & 6 by themselves. The separate circuits help to provide some well utilized flexibility when it comes to spotlighting specific areas throughout the gallery.
There are three expanses of custom-built lighting tracks. Each was designed to accommodate it's own unique and specific anchoring scheme. The longest of the three is comprised of three 20-foot sections connected together
in a track with two, separate circuits, thereby, allowing
us to have all 20 of the 100-Watt Halogen bulbs on at the same time. Or, as with the six overhead lamps, we can have every other one or off as needed. Again, this lends some well needed flexibility when pin-pointing specific works with floods of clear, bright light.
As you can see from the photos of this track, we had to develop an anchoring scheme for those curving iron buttresses that enabled them to be mounted directly onto the four building support beams. The beams, themselves, are 1- foot x 1- foot Redwood, that have been beautifully clad with galvanized steel. Each of the four buttresses were powder-coated flat-white and then baked to a rich crinkle-finish texture for long-lasting durability. In fact, all of the buttresses, throughout the gallery, have this same durable, flat-white finish.
The second longest of these three tracks is comprised of two 20-Foot sections. There are 16 of those same 100-Watt Halogen lights on this track. We had to design and manufacture four, gently curving iron buttresses that could be mounted directly to the north wall of the gallery, which is solid concrete that is 1-foot thick. Notice the elegant sweeping curves of these four buttresses as they descend from just beneath the ceiling-molding down to where the tracks are connected to them at just the right height to generously light very large scale canvases if required.
The third and last of these three tracks is a single 20-foot section up at the entrance of the gallery. In this case, we installed but ten of those same 100-Watt Halogen lights on this track. For this track, we designed and manufactured three, curving iron
buttresses that were mounted to two-by-four studs
inside the wall. You will notice the "T-Shaped" design of these buttresses. This unique design allowed us to anchor them down the center of each of three, separate, two-by-fours, and then, for additional stability, we were able to anchor the top portion of the buttresses to the two-by-fours on either side of the center board. Very clever, if I do so myself.
The final component of the gallery's array of lighting schemes is the row of drop-down pendant lamps that hang from the ceiling right down the middle of the gallery. The oval shape of these lamps is just plain, simple elegance. We use them to spotlight sculptures on pedestals placed directly beneath them. There are six large ones approximately 16-inches in height, with 100-Watt, incandescent bulbs, evenly spaced down the center of the gallery, about eight feet, or so, above the floor of the galley. Just for effect, I installed a single, smaller lamp, about 9-inches in height, up closer to the ceiling, where the larger lamps make the turn from the entrance of the gallery and continue their way to the back of the gallery. The diminutive size of this smaller lamp creates the illusion of increased ceiling height, which is nice. As an added feature, these pendant lamps are all on a dimmer-switch. During the evening hours, we like to dim them down, real low, to create a more intimate atmosphere. They have been a real hit with our patrons during the many festive, yet refined, openings and artist's receptions that we've hosted over the last year, or so.
Blak Sage Gallery of Fine Art ~ 727 San Benito Street ~ Hollister, Ca 95023 ~ 831.636.9100
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