Hank Had The Solution

This one was a long time ago, and I may screw up the details a bit, and Hank may tell me what they were but…….
We, the Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) were putting up an exhibit at the National Art Educators Convention, in Miami (I hope). The attendees included Hank Putch, who was at the time the Director of AICAD and anyone else from the colleges who had an Art Education Department, and a few like myself who came from Art Education Departments or who wanted to go to Miami. We also had some recruitment people with us as art teachers were of course an important link to potential art students.

The exhibition was of drawings representing all of the schools involved with AICAD at the time, or at least the ones who sent drawings to Hank. We had a designated space in the Exhibition Hall, along with other vendors such as books and art supplies dealers. Ours was not a direct sales area, but a subtle marketing booth and an opportunity to see the best of what we did. AS I remember now, it was all work from Foundation year, the first year students. This was done to show high school teachers mainly the relationship between what they sent us and what they achieved in a year, rather than putting up “professional” portfolios which would have little reference points for the classroom teacher.

We had to mount this exhibit, and knew we would have no way to get the schools to send framed work, ready for hanging and we had to have a way to display them.

In those days, the 80’s I believe, shrink wrapping was not a common thing and none of us had such a device. As well, if we went to a frame shop and had them shrink wrap all of the drawings, some were very large, it would have been an enormous expense, not budgeted for I’m sure.

Hank had an incredible solution. He went (as I remember) to his local Safeway in Washington and convinced the butcher (who had an unlimited supply of shrink wrap paper and a machine) to, as a favor to art and humanity, shrink wrap tons of drawings so we could safely take them to Miami and display them.

My hats off to Hank, for an incredible “save” so many years ago and to let him know his good deeds are not forgotten!