Monday, March 28, 2011

my office


This is the front end of my work shop. Often folks pull up and ask if the restaurant is open? "No" I tell them "and get out of my backyard". I just happen to have a SPORTSMAN GRILL sign hanging in my back yard, right outside my work shop. Inside my shop I have a mess. I'm currently making 4 pieces of art for a new restaurant. It is a sushi restaurant so the paintings need to fit. I was given a crude xerox of a photo of a door at at Japanese restaurants that looked like an umbrella. You know like a huge version of the paper umbrellas in your foo foo drinks at the beach resorts. I was asked if I could do some kind of umbrella type thing around 6' in diameter. Sure I could. Could I give them an example of what I would do? Sure I could.
So I gave them this. By the way "them" is the architect firm Peace Designs. They are doing the design for this sushi restaurant.
Anyway I did this small sample of my idea for the umbrellas with different paints and papers for collage.


It is hard to see, but I have collaged different papers for the umbrella. Some of it is Japanese newspaper, some is silver leaf, some is different color tissue paper. I dripped paint for the seams of the umbrella.
These guys also wanted to have me reproduce the back side of a Japanese playing card. This is the image they gave me.



This is what I did. It was small about 2' square. They (peace design) liked it and wanted it to be 6ft X 3.5ft. No problem I told them.


So this is what the "office" is looking like right now. It's a mess.



I bought about 10 Japanese newspapers. I used those to collage two of the umbrellas. For the third umbrella I used the yellow paper with the red print from the sample above. I spent about six hours on each just applying the paper. Some of it I tore into pieces about 2 inches. Some I cut into pieces about twice that size. I then glued each piece down to plywood.

This is what they are looking like right now. Stand by for the finished product.