"Working Play"

"Working Play"

The idea of making a large scale sculpture out of paper that could go from flat to a three dimensional form in space is something that I've been wanting to realize for a long time now. A virtual "pop up sculpture" if you will. 

"Working Play" as it is titled embodies for me the combination of creative fun and hard work. It is approximately 7 feet tall x 4 feet wide and made out of repurposed corrugated cardboard.  The surface was painted with black and white acrylic gesso.  The subject matter for this piece was my son's room and boy does he have fun stuff to play with.  From vintage Fisher Price to the latest and the greatest in toy design.  And I can't forget all his artwork and books, books, books.  this space was such a rich resource for me to pull from.

Above are 7 views that circumnavigate the sculpture from left to right.  I'm essentially walking you around the piece.

One of my favorite elements of the sculpture is the elephant toy container that my wife found for our son at a local antique shop. It's round polka dotted and fun.

I edited through my son's toy selecting and including only ones that he really loves and that are important to him.  I remember him banging on his mini piano when he was only a few months old.

I am so glad that I finally had an opportunity to create this piece of paper sculpture.  The time had finally come.

Now back to the clay!

Little Houses

~ little houses ~

Recently I was asked by the Anchor Art Space in Anacortes if I would be interested in coming up with an art project that would tie their current exhibit titled "Shelter" in with the town's rather large Arts Festival.  I said yes of course not having any idea what I would actually do.  I had a month to figure that out.

Little houses on the sidewalk, little houses in the gallery.....

On day one of the project I was stationed in front of the Anchor Space and I started making many little cardboard houses that would eventually be a part of something bigger.  I temporarily trailed them from inside the gallery out onto the sidewalk.  The biggest realization I had that first day was that wind moves paper easily.  Pretty obvious I know but I hadn't thought about it at all.  The next day I would be building a structure much much bigger out of cardboard and I would be doing it a block further down the street where the wind could be much stronger.

It was a beautiful morning on day 2 and I began by creating a foundation that was weighted on the corners and center.  I had broken down I'm not sure how many Seattle Pottery Supply clay boxes into uniformly sized pieces and cut slots so they could be put together like modular tiles.

At the end of day 2 I had about 3 feet of vertical wall built and I packed all the remaining materials inside, hoping that everything would be there the next morning.

Below is a detail shot of the interlocking flat panels.  I liked the texture the smaller key pieces created on the walls.

Inside the structure was a great add for Seattle Pottery Supply.

On Day 3 (the final day) I was pushing  pretty hard to finish the house structure.  Thanks to a couple of friends and their sweet granddaughters helping me cut slots in cardboard, the end was near.

After getting the roof on, the last thing to do was hang all the tiny houses from day 1, inside the big house.

This was quite the process of planning to preparation to production to documentation to finally deconstruction.  Which went extremely fast.  What took me 3 days to build took 15 minutes to break down.  I felt just like the big bad wolf.

Thanks Anchor Art Space for asking me to do a project.  I truly enjoyed the creative experience.