Bill Black is Director of Liquid 6 Image Design Ltd, the company that created and maintains this website. He opened his own house for 5 years as part of the Beyond the Level trail exhibiting between 8 and 23 artists each year. He has also exhibited in houses in the Hanover trail and Independent venues as well as local galleries.
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This week it’s all practical nuts and bolts stuff I’ll be dealing with. How do you set up your home, how do you take money, how do you pay your artists? All the fun, stress-free bit.

So, with up to 23 artists having exhibited in my home in a single year and having opened my home for five years in a row, how did I do it without going nuts? By being organised.

It’s a huge undertaking, whether you plan to exhibit 1, 5 or 25 artists in your home. Lots of open house owners do it in lots of different ways and I always tried to be clear about as much of it in advance as possible.

So, first things first and Golden rule number one: Decide what’s open and what’s private.

In other words, determine the amount of space you want to turn over to your entire exhibition first of all. Then decide how much space you, as an individual, want. Then decide whether or not you are going to have other artists exhibiting with you. The majority of open houses feature more than one artist and it’s a sensible choice for purely practical reasons, if nothing else. House sitting, answering questions from rooms full of visitors, taking payments, etc are all handled better with several hands on board. You’ll be surprised how busy it can get, especially if you are part of a popular trail.