And There The Moon-Bird Rests From His Flight

Today, I helped out the CHER group take down their installation in the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery window on Broad Street. One month ago, we spent six hours on a rainy Monday moving, taping, painting, and  building the display. It was saddening to see all of that precision and effort packed away in the trunk of Veronica's car in a matter of 15 minutes. From this experience I did learn that as an artist, you are responsible for all aspects of your work, whether it's installing, transporting, or displaying. With entire installations this is quite a challenge because the piece has to look perfect from every angle and sometimes there are multiple objects in the piece so they need to be arranged precisely, not to mention moving all of the stuff from a studio to a gallery.
The title of the piece was And There The Moon-Bird Rests From His Flight. The title comes from a quote in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, a popular children's book. The idea was formulated during a CHER meeting. The goal was to put up a window display that was fun and eye catching to promote their art, and because of the recent death of Maurice Sendak, it was only appropriate to create an installation depicting their favorite childhood authors and illustrators. What they came up with was a scene from a child's bedroom. It consists of a fort made of bedsheets with a desk as its foundation. Surrounding the fort are handmade pillows with intricate drawings by CHER's Jessie Clark attached to them. The real eye catcher in the installation is the creepy yet whimsical monster emerging from the fort. 
I asked Veronica what she planned on doing with the bedsheets, desks, pillows, and monster. She said she would reuse them in other projects; nothing ever goes to waste.