Home Is Where the Art is…the series.

Well, I finished the 3rd house last night! I took lots of pix (boy it’s hard to photograph these) and then handed them into the RAA for jurying. I’m really happy with the 3rd one. It’s called “Home Is Where the Art Is: #3 Cabot Trail”.

To recap: I was inspired by Jane Davila to make a 3 dimensional house, where each side of the house is it’s own little art quilt. My early experiment ended up being so vigorously complimented by many people (like..5 or 6!!!) that it was deemed not a prototype, but a keeper:

It’s named after the street I live one – 2 olive branches are free motion quilted on the house.

The second house, entitled “Home Is Where the Art is: #2 Baltic Avenue” was the one where I realized I wanted a base to ground the piece (which made me go back and make a simple one for the Olive Ave. house). The way I finished the edges of the base, combined with the simplistic house shape reminded my husband of the game Monopoly. Which property name do you most associate with Monopoly? For me, it’s Baltic Avenue (that and Ventnor, but it’s such an ugly name).

My Uncle Winnie (boat captain by summer, photojournalist by winter) wrote me with the following questions as to my motivations:

“While it is quite striking and certainly well done I’m not confident that I get the point of the 3-D aspect? Is there a functional angle I’m missing? Or is this simply the making of a normally 2-D art or graphic into a 3-D art or graphic? None of this is meant to be critical, you understand, it’s just that as an old codger I’m probably missing something here and need you to clarify your objectives in creating the piece. Perhaps it is just fun?”

Holy c**p, I think he put more work into thinking about that paragraph than I did about why I wanted to make these! But the asking did get me to think a bit more about my process, and here’s what I think were my motivations:

1. Because it’s cool.
2. There’s also the challenge of physically creating them – met, but not enjoyed! (Especially with the last one where I used – DOH! TWO layers of Peltex!!!)
3. I REALLY LIKE creating smaller pieces that are part of a larger whole: “Once in a Blue Moon” or  here or here for example. To make 8 small pieces that are specific dimensions (those gable ends being neat spaces to fill) and hold together as a unit but are at the same time pieces that can stand on their own really stimulates my creative juices!

It’s also really neat to see how my ideas change and grow from one complete piece to the next. As these were created to enter into a Multi Media Mini show (< 14 ” on a side). the intention behind the “MINI” show is to draw people in and make them look closer at a small piece of art – and these houses really do that. I’m glad the deadline pushed me to make them. I’ll continue to make more – I’m thinking smaller, roofed, quirky birdhouses. I’m also digging bird nests right now, so will be working through that as well

I swear, the worst part of this whole project is taking pictures of the darn things. I’ll be posting more to my Flickr site as I get them processed. The shadows are going to KILL ME! (not really…but ARGH!)