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the beast in his shiny new cage
Last weekend at the Bath House Cultural Center's Spring Art Mart, I finally got a chance to test drive the new display system which I have been quietly working on since the beginning of this year.
The new rig worked like a charm and looked fantastic. A number of artists at the event stopped by to ask where they could get a similar system for themselves.
The short answer is that you can't. Most of what we've affectionately nicknamed The Cage was custom designed to my specifications, and required the assistance of companies all over the country to build.
However, the companies who worked on this project were amazing, and if you find yourself in need of this sort of thing I highly recommend you give them a try.
Flourish Company
Flourish specializes in indoor and outdoor canopies for art shows and crafts fairs.
The Cage is based on one of their standard indoor booth frames, but is customized to be both resizable and capable of breaking down into one (extremely heavy) duffle bag.
Hint: Call them directly and speak to Luke or Tom.
Trivia: At full extension, The Cage's canopy frame is 10' by 10' and weighs almost 100 lbs.
Crosslink Powder Coating of McKinney
Artist Jay Silber of Kestrel Ridge Forge recommended this company for the powder coating of the canopy frame. The work was excellent, very reasonably priced and the fast turnaround time for the 60+ pieces we needed worked on was just plain impressive.
Hint: When powder-coating threaded screws, make sure to leave a bit of the threads exposed so that they get coated to match.
Direct Lighting
Direct Lighting has great customer service, and got us into a trade-show quality track lighting kit for less than we could piece it together ourselves.
Hint: All track lighting, no matter how well designed, gets scortchingly hot. Design your display with this in mind.
Tarps Online
It's not often you find a need for 100 black ball bungies, but it is reassuring to know that there is a company who keeps them in stock in various sizes year-round.
Trivia: It takes about 30 or so eleven inch bungies just to tie up all the components of The Cage for safe transportation and storage.
Additional Trivia: It hurts like heck to be snapped with a ball bungie.
Best Fabrics
10901 Harry Hines Blvd
Dallas, TX 75220
(214) 350-2583
This is a terrific wholesale fabric supplier. In addition to being the best prices in town, they also have an incredible selection of upholstery fabrics.
Golden D'or Fabrics
Plan on losing several hours to browsing if you visit their wholesale location. They also repair sewing machines and had the best prices for industrial strength hook and loop fasteners I could find.
Trivia: Between the curtains and lighting straps, we consumed about 12 yards of the stuff, twice over.
