How to Keep the Art Dry in your Free Little Art Gallery

How to Keep the Art Warm and Dry

I got an email with a question about a problem a FLAG host is having with paper art inside their FLAG – the paper is curling. They asked how to solve this problem. The methods for keeping the inside of your FLAG dry are the same as keeping your house dry – a solid roof, quality windows and doors, and sealant.

I don’t have a free little art gallery, but I do have an outdoor version of my micro gallery, the Angelica Kauffman Gallery, that has been in the Terrain Biennial, an outdoor art show, twice, for 6 weeks each time, going into November in Chicagoland. My micro gallery has withstood rain and snow, while exhibiting paper art, and the art has always been safe and dry.

Building this gallery was a family effort, with my family putting in 40 hours building it, and that doesn’t count the time that I spent gluing on the hundreds of individual cedar shingles. I’ll go over some of the construction basics. Starting with the design – we wanted this gallery to look as different as possible from a Free Little Library, while also letting in lots of light, and allowing for good viewing of the art. We needed a roof design that would encourage rain to drain off. For all those reasons, we went with this slanted roof and three windowed walls.

Each window is slotted into a tight slot and then sealed with clear caulk. The hidden door is at the back. Here’s how I did the roof: I used Titebond Extreme wood glue to glue the shingles on, following the directions that came with the shingles, and the glue bottle. Once the shingles were all on and the glue was dry, I used a gardening sealer product (I’ll look up the name) to seal it, doing two coats.

In the past, when I’ve worked with teens to build Little Free Libraries, we used asphalt shingles, with roofing tar paper under the shingles. Basically, you follow the same construction methods that you would at full scale.

Solving Dampness Problems in a Free Little Library

Okay, so what if you’ve already built your FLAG and now are having issues with dampness, how can you remediate the problem?

I use this product around the door in my outdoor micro gallery. In addition to a good roof, quality construction, and clear caulk sealing the windows, I use this stick on tape around the door. Maybe it’s overkill, but maybe it’s helping?

If you didn’t use caulk when you built your FLAG, it’s not too late, you can add caulk now, around the windows. What about along the roof line, could you add caulk where the roof meets the walls?

Assess your door, does if fit tightly? Is there anything you can do to address the door? Since your door opens out, you could put the sealing tape on the inside of the door frame, as an added later of sealing. This particular brand held on for me, even in the snow, it never fell off. (A different brand did fall off.)

I hope that helps!

Here are the artists who are in the show pictured above:

Back wall:  Jill Kramer, @chimerapress.jakramer; Bryan Northup, @bryan.northup; Elaine Luther

Left outer wall:  Daniela Wenzel @danielawenzelart

Right outer wall: Tess Dillenberger @tessdillenberger 

Inner walls:  Left: Chocolate by Tamara Wasserman, @wassermantamara; Left Matchbox for the Blue Room by David Morris, @davidmorrispaintings