This past week has seen a certain amount of house building. Nothing to do with bricks and mortar, as the tiny homes I build are created using paper and card, with plenty of glue. If I could build a person-size house by ripping up old books, you know I would. But alas, paper houses do not last in the big real world….
photo: two houses in progress - I often work on more than one piece of paper sculpture at a time. If I am going to get the table sticky with glue, I might as well make the most of it.
There was a reason why I started house-building this week. Well, a few reasons. I felt like the escapism of it all, and this time of year I am thinking about creating cosy scenes. Also, I wanted to build a house that had drawers! And why not. A house with drawers to store all the tiny paintings I will be making over the weeks ahead. I could always do with more storage. Rather than just another functioning box, why not spend hours and hours building something that is - almost a box but not!
Adding washes of gouache paint really brings the house to life. I like the text from the pages to seep through, to give a sense of age and intrigue. There is nothing perfect and everything is rather wonky - just as it should be. The downstairs will have flooring and could be furnished and decorated, but will be mostly used for storing bits and bobs. Quite possibly it will be a continually changing world, like any home.
I have many and various paper houses in my home. They are all modest or small in size. Most are not furnished but are displayed simply, just as a jug or a painting but be seen as quite usual. I also make simple boxes that are ‘rooms’ for displaying my collections of dolls house furniture. I like these because they can be forever changed around. As I don’t have a great deal of space, the lightweight boxes (made from card and book pages of course) can easily be attached temporarily to a wall. I collect dolls house furniture from all eras, and would love to have so many more pieces in my collection, but these things are highly collectable and can be pricey. It is not surprising to find an antique dolls house object - anything from a chair to a toilet brush (as I saw recently) selling for three times the price you might expect to pay for an actual people sized version.
photo: I realised this house was going to have drawers. So I made the drawer space in the roof and started to build drawers for the floor below. Fiddly and time consuming.
Miniature collections of furniture and objects have helped my painting. The mood of an object can be enough, the simple shape or memory it conjures. A scene of small objects can help me see a snapshot, spark a sketchbook conversation, inspire certain compositions. I am reminded of how a chair may cast a shadow, or how a mirror works in a room.
Photo: Here are the two houses so far. Still work to do on both. The traditional town house on the left will be painted and wallpapered, and furnished. The drawers house on the right just needs the ground floor to be painted/decorated.
Every so often I will tidy everything away, feeling it has collected too much dust. Then, I will slowly bring things out again, creating new living spaces and entryways into stories that may or may not find themselves collecting new layers of dust. Of course, anyone who collects for the pleasure of it, might feel they have to justify their collecting to others. You either get or you don’t, in may ways. I wonder: what do you collect and how does it bring you joy? I would love to know.
Meanwhile, I would like to fill a room at any of the Tate galleries with my paper houses (Rachel Whiteread style) but am waiting for that phone call….
Photo: looking in, looking out… Here you can see the other side of the house, which is kept simple but has open windows on the ground floor.
**
A few small stories from this week
Preparing lunch, I wash salad leaves and find a small caterpillar. Oh the relief of finding it now. I transfer it to a clean jar, with a few leaves for its comfort. I am uncertain if it will live or thrive, or just hate the world for the short time it is here. But I see it moves about. The jar is on the windowsill by the kitchen sink. It has somehow flipped a leaf to conceal itself. Of course anyone might cover their head in a blanket right now. Keep within a safe space. As I wash up I listen to the radio, a woman scientist is explaining to me how caterpillars excrete a bacteria which maintains the chlorophyll in a leaf, meaning it keeps green and fresh. Right now, if you can, you can walk in the wild and see this for yourself: a leaf that would otherwise turn yellow or brown will remain green whilst the caterpillar makes it so.
*
And the leaves on a neighbours’ apple tree are still all green. I stare out of my bedroom window (I do so much staring out these days) and notice the green of it. If my memory serves me correctly that tree will still have a few leaves on it come Christmas.
*
A week of power cuts. There’s a problem with our local ‘box’ up the hill. The power goes on and off in the night, waking me with the bleep and flash of things off and on… Next day, I am painting, with intense concentration, knowing the power has gone. But it does not matter. Not one jot. The washing has stopped. I can paint, I have no reason to stop. So I keep painting, in the silence of no radio, with just the occasional quiet thud of a grape falling from the vine outside my window, the squawk of thrushes who come and go as quickly as they can. I can paint. I have everything I need.
photo: sketchbook pages from 2017
*
Thanks so much for reading here, for your kind comments and support. If you enjoyed reading please like this post. If you would like to buy me a coffee that would be much appreciated too. And thanks to everyone for your regular support, it is so welcome.
Oh gosh I love the idea of little paper houses as storage places and as display pieces to pin on the wall and sit here and there. It would be great to see pictures of other ones you've made and use in your house. As far as collections go....I have quite a few. Probably too many to list in case I embarrass myself. But, I will say that my favorite collection is probably the only one I still want to add to because I probably only have four. It is patches and mends on vintage clothing. The best one I have is a pair of old coveralls that has multiple patches on it. I LOVE it so much.