It’s hard to go wrong with fiberglass pools.  They’re easy to maintain, they use very little chemicals, and they have the lowest lifetime cost of any type of pool. Notwithstanding, there is one way fiberglass pool owners can totally screw all that up:  By Draining the Pool without professional help. Every Year we hear accounts (not from our customers) of folks intentionally draining fiberglass pools for various reasons.  I’m here to tell you that’s a big no-no! 1.  Dirty, Nasty, Stanky Pool Water (yes, I used the word “stanky”) An ill-informed fiberglass pool owner may mistakenly believe that draining and refilling the pool is required, or simply easier, than cleaning the pool manually.  It’s a rare case indeed that a fiberglass pool needs to be drained for cleaning….possibly after a flood or other natural disaster…..or maybe after years and years of neglect.  But for the most part, a fiberglass pool will be crystal clear within a matter of 1-3 days of adding chemicals and vacuuming.

2.  Someone moves into a home with a fiberglass pool We take time to educate our customers of the importance of not draining the pool.  However, we have had an instance or two when someone else purchased a home with one of our pools and the new homeowner drained the pool for some reason…..again, big no-no! (We’re now printing labels to put on filter systems to prevent this from occurring in the future). 3.  A foreclosure home that’s been abandoned for years When someone takes on the task of whipping one of these properties back into shape they have a major task on their hands.  Talk about a to-do list!  Imagine what a pool that’s been sitting for 2-3 years looks like:  it seems a no-brainer to simply drain and clean it…..wrong-o!  Don’t go there, not without professional assistance anyway. If your pool really needs to be drained, contact a local fiberglass pool professional to do it for you, or at least give you some assistance.  Some pools are perfectly fine to drain without any precaution, but only some. 

A good percentage of fiberglass pools will incur some damage if the pool is drained without taking proper measures. Two things:  first, it needs to be determined how much water is around the outside of the pool.  Some people mistakenly believe that because there was no water during their pools excavation, that the hole remains dry at all times.  This is far from the truth.  The hole around the outside of your pool is no different from any other hole in your yard….it fills with water.  Your type of soil will determine how long water remains in the cavity outside your pool.  Sandy soil is most permeable, clay is least. If there is water around the outside of the pool, the water either needs to be removed, or if this is not possible you will have to wait until a dryer part of the year when the hole is dry. The second thing to be sure that the pool is properly braced.  I won’t go into how to do this, but it’s good practice to brace fiberglass pools when draining them because they are engineered to remain full of water. 

The design of the pool will determine where and how many braces to use.essendon bombers curtains Well, rumor has it that fiberglass pools pop up.  lowes allen and roth curtain rodsI’m not saying that’s an impossibility, but I can say that after over 600 installations over the past decade, we have yet to have that happen to one of our pools after the project is completed.  curtains old hag maskThe damage that we have seen comes in the form of bulging side walls and floors, and splits in pool floors…..all of which can be repaired.   hookless shower curtain navy

But my point is, why incur any unnecessary damage at all?  hookless shower curtain youtubeLeave the bloody thing full and we have nothing to worry about….right?target silver sunburst shower curtain I need to state here that these principles apply to all types of pools.  curtains sw17Concrete pools will actually float.  Vinyl liners bubble and float as well.  It’s necessary to take these precautions with any inground pool. So, whether you have a pool with nasty water, have just moved into a home with a fiberglass pool, or find yourself in a major renovation project with a fiberglass pool, just know that draining the pool without professional assistance is not an option.Opening reception Friday, September 18th, 7-10 PM

David Castillo Gallery is proud to present Its Last Move, a solo show by Robert Melee. Through painting, sculpture, photography, and mixed-media installations, Melee reactivates questions that patina his milieu: How does materiality feel? How does form perform? The artist’s responses are often distinguished for contextualizing meditations on minimalism, op art, and/or theater within the dark domicile of suburban tract housing, pricking the site of familial relationships as they unraveled or as their unraveling is remembered. A series of photographs taken by the artist on the eve of selling his childhood home comprise the exhibition’s centrifugal force. The photographs document the house— empty shelves, bare walls, the ghostly stamps of furniture on carpet— with neither effrontery nor grace, criticism nor sentiment. Guided by their formal qualities, notably a lattice of beiges, mauves, and vermillion, Melee collages, crops, rotates, and mounts the images, often attaching this territory to segments of track lighting or sculpted and painted fiberglass curtains.

These artworks mark a reorientation of the photograph in the artist’s practice from a supplementary sculptural object to the site of sculpture itself. Fabricated curtain formations appear throughout Its Last Move, framing the exhibition as an imminent curtain call on adolescence (his, before moving to New York in the 1980’s), autonomy (his mother’s, before moving to a senior residence), as well as the fixed boundary between memorialization and celebration, nostalgia and immediacy, comedy and tragedy. Whether over a magician’s campy tabernacle, a mourning shroud, or the windows left dressed at the insistence of Melee’s mother, curtains are a permeable border, signifying obscuration as well as revelation. Last Move Curtain shows the artist’s signature marbling of enamel and fiberglass over wood. Similar mark-making partitions works on paper, exhibited for the first time as studies for sculptures likeUntitled Draped Figure, in which a mannequin head and torso are bound to wooden architecture with ropes of fiberglass and enamel paint.

The emergent figure is equal parts Venus de Milo, The Nightmare, Virgin Mary, mother. Inter Gilded Draped Substitution features six irregular stalactite and stalagmite panels, a mine of 23 carat gold, enamel, plaster, and the artist’s hallmark beer bottle caps on wood. The aesthetic phylum of curtains invades Its Last Move like kudzu, at junctures as dense and as violent. In a series of sculptures titled Disco Tray, vintage silver trays are ensconced in a fungal accretion of enamel and plaster. Substance abuse and surface abuse seem to solidify in these examples of domestic body horror, both erotic and grotesque, perverse and affirmative. Another series, Lamp, wraps the anatomy of freestanding lamps in plaster or fiberglass and candies them in armatures of enamel: lava dark, mutant green, boil pink. Although non-functioning, one is attracted to the gruesome lamps like a moth, a dangerous desire to fry in the uncanny between a familiar silhouette and an untenable surface, between painting and sculpture.

Like Melee’s former investigations into found household objects, Lamp raises questions of class and associated taste. The series also gestures toward narratives of conflict and neglect. In order to engage pre-linguistic experiences like death and dying, the tenants of Its Last Move, we employ metaphor. Metaphorization is arguably the last move invited by Melee’s artworks and the personal history they beckon. Robert Melee lives and works in New York. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Solo exhibitions include White Cube and Sutton Lane, London; Robert Melee’s UNIT, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Currents 31: Robert Melee, The Milwaukee Art Museum; Robert Melee Sculpture, City Hall Park, NYC; and Arena Mexico, Guadalajara; His work has been included in group exhibitions around the world including Greater New York,P.S.1, NYC; Adaptive Behavior, New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC; I am a Camera, The Saatchi Collection, London; Family, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT;