Project #2
Boundaries
Stephanie Bohlen
For this project, I picked the deck connecting my backyard to my house as my chosen boundary. It’s an old, dilapidated deck that’s over 30 years old. It is light bluish grey in stain and holds a lot of my childhood memories. I chose the entire deck because I felt that not one piece- from the chairs to the table to the planters, could not do my memories justice. As of right now, the deck is made of Strathmore Cream Paper and is a little clumsy. I tried spraying liquid starch on a sample piece, and all I came up with was an unpaintable piece of paper. I’m not sure whether to paint, stain, dye, spray-paint, or leave it blank. I’m having a hard time figuring out which memories to highlight in this piece. There was that time I was stung by a wasp, and the time I saw that opossum underneath. The time my cat fought a stray, and the first mews of my kitten Kit Kat. The first bird catch of my cat Socks with a bluejay, the first purr of my cat Bear. The tweets of my birds Sky and Meadow as I set the birdcage on the railing of the deck to give them fresh air. The painting and art sprees with my best friend at the time Amy Bolender. My dog Graham getting scraps from the innumerable times we had barbeque cook-outs. General sun tanning and book reading. I feel like this deck has gone through it all.
So far I have the main structure built with some preliminary supports and wood pieces. I was playing around with the idea of paper clay to use on top to sculpt each wooden board.
I added some structural support in back.
I ended up printing out the deck wood onto computer paper and sticky tack gluing it to my work. My deck is naturally grey, so the monochromatic print worked well. The deck is a little haphazard from being used over the years, so it’s supposed to have the bend and wrinkles. Overall I am very happy about my work!
