hanging the show in Noe Valley

today we are hanging the show in Noe Valley Ministry, Gallery Sanchez. hanging shows can be a long, complicated process and it'd be great if i could do all this faster. i will be helping to hang the Altered barbie show and i can't be this methodical, i will have to think on my feet as artist bring in last minute changes.
my current belabored process started over a month ago when i got the dimensions for my share of the space in the gallery. At that point i was submitting my work to a couple of shows and planning on submitting to a few more so i made a master plan of what was going to be where. i had to settle all this in my mind before sending out my image to be included in the publicity for Noe Valley.
so i thought about the themes for the other shows and then thought about coherence for this show. i decided that certain pieces were definitely going to other shows and could not be included in this mix. decided the Yosemite image was the anchor for the Noe Valley show. I thought it made a good publicity photo because it's hi contrast, recognizable even shrunk down, and people had responded so well to it at the Art on the Avenues show.
next i did the math to figure how many framed images could fit in my Noe Valley space allotment. I had not yet unpacked everything from the Art on the Avenues show, so i started pulling out pieces and sorting them. propping them up around the house (my studio was too small for all this visual thinking). finally the idea of green/blue tan and blue came together and i started selecting sand, ocean, and greenish blue plant images, mixing vertical and horizontal work.
next i began to draw layouts of the famed pieces on my section of wall. my first layout was just six pictures, but it looked sparse when i used my graph paper to put things in scale. so i tried other combinations. i stopped when i had a fairly settled idea.
yesterday i took up Debra's suggestion and measured out the 5x7 space on my floor and laid out the actual framed images on the floor. good thing too because some of my frames are a tiny but bigger than others and that made a big difference in my little plan! i tried moving them about but eventually found it too physically demanding to avoid stepping on them and bending over so much (i've been a bit under the weather). so i went back to drawing on my graph paper. I should have used a pencil because i changes my mind so many times and made a bit of a mess with my pen. this morning before i pack them up to take over to the gallery i will clean them and lay them out on last time.
so i could improve by:
being organized through keeping a folder or searchable database of images of what's in frames now so i can sort thru the images on the computer to help me choose rather than moving them about the house;
deciding faster through confidence in my decisions;
being more accurate, through knowing the actual dement-ions of my work and using a calculator;
being sensible by using a pencil and good eraser when drawing plans;
learning to use the computer for layouts (so that it's faster than drawing on paper which it's not now cuz i fumble through it) because designing on the computer will be more accurate and give me more visual feedback than my sketches on graph paper and be physically less demanding than laying the framed art out on the floor!
the reason for exploring process is to see where you can make changes and help others think about there own process.