There’s a particular kind of dread that comes with hanging a finished piece. You’ve spent weeks — sometimes months — getting the work right. Then it’s down to a hook, a nail, and a moment of pure faith.
For mixed-media painter Nadia Voss, that moment used to happen a dozen times a year, in a studio that never quite felt finished.
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Nadia’s studio, a converted warehouse space she shares with two other artists, has concrete walls on one side and old plaster on the other. Neither one forgives a bad hole.
“I had pieces stacked against the wall for months,” she says. “Not because they weren’t ready. Because I wasn’t ready to commit to where they’d go. Every hook felt permanent and temporary at the same time — permanent because of the hole, temporary because I never trusted it’d actually hold.”
Group critiques were the worst of it. Pieces arriving crooked. A frame that had visibly slipped between one session and the next. The occasional heart-stopping moment of a canvas coming loose entirely.
“You start to believe that’s just what hanging art is like,” she says. “Stressful. A bit of a gamble.”
