School of the 3 Minute Expertise: Hanging Large Prints

In the five months since I left the New York City comfort zone for the uncertainty of Chicagoland there have been numerous challenges I've had to face: culture shock; trying to build a business in summer, when the client set is on vacation; now, the added burden of a major economic slump... it's not pretty. Given all of the aforementioned, you can understand why interior decorating has been among my lowest priorities. But solve problems I will, and after vacillating on style and budget I've finally made the decisions that make a house my home.

Basically, I've got more wall space than existing art can fill and I've always liked the idea of very large prints. If you're a photographer you're aware that there's previously been a serious barrier to entering the large print decorating set... it can be very expensive. Technology, however, has come to the rescue with high-quality, low-priced, inkjet printing.

Shortly before I moved out here, I had dinner (in New Jersey) at the home of my friends Tom Kelly and Gail Mooney, and they had just had some test prints made for an exhibition Gail was mounting in California. The prints were beautiful and relatively inexpensive, so when I finally abandoned equivocation as a modus operandi I selected my favorite New York City image (okay, I'm slightly homesick), went on-line, uploaded a file and ordered a 33 inch by 50 inch print mounted on Foamcor from the same guys that Tom and Gail used. My only problem is that I gave no thought as to how to hang this on my wall.

The print weighs very little, though the package it came in weighed 34 pounds (very well protected) yet hanging it presented a problem. After much consultation I took the advice of my friend, Mark Kalan, who suggested hanging the print the same way one would hang a mirror. A beautifully simple, nearly invisible solution, an investment in proportion to the cost of the print ($1.98), and I've filled a visual hole in my living room wall.

I have a few more large walls around the house, what else shall I print?