I recently prepared for the opportunity to visit Columbia Missouri to be a Resident Window Installation Artist at the TRUE/FALSE Film Festival. With the challenge of my proximity in Wisconsin, I constructed the peices with images and measurements from afar. Charged with the duty of filling 3 large window spaces along with the lack of ability to attach anything to the ceiling and the guideline of impermanance and easy clean up, I was pleasantly forced to learn about some new materials and processes in order to properly fulfill the assignment!
This dowel
(***see more uses for dowels) worked great for making this large drawing on the top of a pile of 7 sheets of 5 foot by 10 foot recycled kraft paper rolled out on my carpet with all the furniture moved out of the way.
In order to keep the branches together at the top, they all attached to the top margin in a closed configuration. cutting the thick layers of paper worked just fine, but the fun was peeling out the negative space.
Down the line, this took about an hour to cut the branches
I added a deer at the end, thinking i should do something bold and then cut it away at the end if it wasn't necessary.
It turned out like this:
It rolled up okay, from the bottom up so the peninsula branches wouldn't tangle, and off into the carryon luggage.
Ragtag Cinema, a small independant cinema within a space that also encompasses two separate enterprises: a video store and cafe called Uprise Bakery on the windows of which I was able to installed the trees!
The trees unrolled just fine and with tools in suitcase,
a ladder, and a lovely lady named Annie to help, I started working on the 9 foot windows taping the paper to itself, and then taping the tape to the metal window frames.
,
In the past, i have created trees on windows in other ways: with poster paint
***see Wedding Decorations and with contact paper
****see Windows of Rochambo> Neither of these methods were suitable for the impermanence and easy cleanup factors. Cut paper was fast in layers, and very opaque!
*Some factors of visibility with window art are the opacity and color of your material interacting with lighting and glare in a tension of contrast for figure/ground relationships. Appearances changes at all times of day on either side of the glass. Assume that all the elements were affixed on the interior environment. Tints and translucents reflect the light because of the white in them and look better when they are front lit, they even survive the glare of direct sunlight on the glass from the exterior view during the day, (in general frontlit glass causes glare enough to be a total mirror) and risk disappearing from the interior against a backlit sky. With tones and opaques that absorb the light because of the black in them, they contrast better backlit and will disappear when lit in front revealing the black against a black backdrop. Tones look better on the inside during the day with the backlit window, and outside at night with the backlit interior.
The tinted light brown paper stood out pretty well because of both its lighter color and its opacity which caused bolder contrasts.
this photo is deceiving because despite the brightness in the room it was dark because of the paper opacity.
And the luxury of opacity comes at the cost of overshadowing. So i trimmed it back to the archways
Front doors
Patio doors
Back lit from the cafe!
And that was just day one! More soon! Thanks for reading!
xx,
v
