With the brainstorming power of some other creative minds, (mostly my sister, Emily) I have a good idea for how I want to present my coffee table book in the gallery in May. Since a coffee table book might be a difficult piece to display in a large, primarily empty room, I was struggling coming up with an idea for how to make the presentation physically bigger than the size of a magazine. Emily had the idea of building a table that could be cohesive with the style of location where I could imagine my book being placed. I looked into materials and styles of tables and I like the idea of a heavy wood-topped, bar-style table (high and long) with galvanized steel piping as the legs and support.

When it comes to the placement of the table in the gallery, setting up in a corner with the table a few feet away from both walls will create three dimensional space to act as a ‘room’ surrounding the display. Visitors can walk all the way around the table allowing for people to be on both sides looking through the books. On the walls emanating from the corner, I want to hang a few of the strongest images from within the book to help establish the ‘room’ feeling. To round it all out, I’ll place some modern, yet homey, decorative elements on the table to contribute the presence of the display. I did a little bit of 3D modeling (this took 5-ever to figure out) to get a sense of what I’m imagining and I think it could look really nice if I can get this made. Here’s a screen grab of the modeling so you have an idea.

The current table model is an unconventional table top. It consists of 2 4x8 pieces of lumber sitting two inches apart, braced together by 5 joints spanning the length of the table top. Current concept is to use Mendocino Redwood for the main lumber and join it with a contrasting wood. The redwood pays homage to Northern California, following along with the book. Conceptually, the two halves of the top represent nature and the athlete with the connecting joiners being sport.

Let me know what you think of this idea and what I could do to make it better (in your mind).

Cheers