Well I have finally made it to Hamburg: The painting of Renate (size 20"x 24") went through LAX security and just made it through the luggage carry on security scanner. On the plane there was enough room to store it standing upright in the coat compartment by the planes entrance.
In Zurich were I changed planes it was a different story. The painting was about an inch to wide and had to be hand checked. So as the security guard was opening the tape to take a peak I told him that I was writing about the painting on my blog and wanted to see if I can take a photo of him with the painting. Bild is picture in German and when he heard me saying that I was writing, he must have misunderstood me, because he thought I was writing for the newspaper Das Bild. SO before I knew it, he picked the painting up and held it next to him, posing and sporting a huge grin. That's when his boss came running and shouting 'kein Photo Erlaubt'- 'No Photo permitted' . I had a good laugh at this and although I was not able to shoot the photo when he was holding the picture, I sneaked in a rather hastily taken shot as he was wrapping it up again. Although the top of his head is missing, I got a kick out of getting s.th to remember this encounter by! LOL!
The painting was delivered today and was met with great enthusiasm and is already hanging on the wall. I still need to make some adjustments, but I don't know if I can get the painting back.
Anyhow, I am glad that all went so well. The painting was sandwiched between to flat gesso boards of the exact same size of the canvas. I placed everything in plastic and taped it together and made a handle to carry it along. This worked well because it was easy to carry and since I was able to get it into the plane, I did not have to worry about it getting damaged.
