Do You Hear an Echo (Echoooo) in Your Stairwell?

Usually when I think of "acoustic" art, my mind goes straight to acoustic guitar music, as in MTV Unplugged. (Yes, I am getting old. But you have to admit that the Nirvana show back then was pretty spectacular.)

Anyway, now that I've inflicted - uhhh - that is, now that I have shared my musical tastes with you, let's get back to our real subject, which is installing acoustic art.

If you're moving to Asheville you'll quickly discover that almost all of the homes have two stories (or more). In fact, even many of the little cottages have daylight basements in order to take advantage of the steep terrain. And of course, two stories means you'll have a stairwell... and having a stairwell usually means you'll have a few noisy echoes.

So how do you cut down on echoes in a home? Well we've had several clients get in touch recently about hanging art in a staircase, and they had some great ideas.

First up is this beautiful macrame piece which came from Etsy. (Sadly I didn't get the shop name.)

I love the "mountains and waves" pattern. It seems very appropo considering we live in the mountains, alongside several rivers.

Next is an organic modern felt sculpture that's much bigger than it looks at first glance. I'd say each of the little rectangles is slightly larger than a phone. This one tested the limits of our ladders, which max out at about 16 feet, but it was worth it.

The homeowners custom-ordered the felt sculpture, and they even had it dyed to match a fun blown-glass collage which we had already installed over their kitchen door.

If you have a more traditional style of home, you could also try an antique tapestry. I've read recently that these are coming back into fashion as more and more people embrace the "English Country" look.

And of course, if you want to support the local Asheville artisans, you can't go wrong with a good old-fashioned quilt. Or maybe even a good modern quilt! Nowadays fabric artists often construct their pieces with rods for hanging pockets, which makes installation much simpler.

Of course, the main challenge when installing art in a stairwell is that if it's a wide piece, the far end has to go pretty high up over the stair.

​That's where we come in: we have special adjustable stairwell ladders and scaffold boards so we can reach up to sixteen feet over the stair. And that's plenty high.

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