Tue 20 Aug 2019
Tales of a box folder
Posted by PJ under art, boxes, projects
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I was having a conversation with my friend
Mainly, I said to my friend, I’m feeling shame about this. I did complete my mission of folding one box a day for a year but all the little boxes are now sitting in a large box waiting for me to do something with them. I’ve had several ideas, but whatever I produce to incorporate them all is going to be rather large so I haven’t had the drive or the will for the next phase.
I had thought to weave them all together with fine copper wire, even bought some wire and started that process—and it promised to look quite smashing! But I soon realized that 1) it would take an entire wall to display, and 2) I don’t currently have a large enough workspace to incorporate that process.
Then I bought a small airplane propeller (like one does) with the idea of hanging them from it and suspending it from the ceiling. But again, so many small boxes and not enough room to work on it. I hung the propeller on the wall instead.
(In case anyone is wondering about the rocks in that basket—because sometimes people do—I found these lovely slate grey pebbles and these lovely snow-white pebbles and they looked so lovely sitting side by side that I filled the basket with them sitting side by side. 😉 My cleaning people gave me the side-eye the first time they saw them, but they didn’t say much. They have long-since given up questioning my many odd decorating choices. And they’ve been much happier since I told them not to bother dusting the mantelpiece.)
After the propeller debacle, I remembered that I had an old Japanese-style three pane folding screen covered in rice paper which had been damaged (the rice paper) in the Great Rat Invasion. (Apparently, rice paper is tasty?) It was composed of many small wood-framed rectangles. I thought I could remove the rice paper and display the boxes in the rectangles. It would be compact enough for display, plus I wouldn’t need to lay it flat to work on it. I got most of the rice paper off—though not as much as I remembered (as I saw when I photographed it) (Did I mention what a pain in the butt it is to cut out hundreds on small rice paper squares?) (It was one large sheet of rice paper, but glued thoroughly to each square so I couldn’t remove it all at once.) (And it occurred to me just now that I might have been able to steam it off, but oh well.) The problem with the screen was that there were only 200-something rectangles and 365 boxes, plus some of the boxes were bigger than the rectangles. So that stalled.
But that idea may be coming back around again. I think I can come up with a work around. It’s just a question of my ambition coming back around again.
So many projects, so little ambition.
