house skin progress

As you may know I have had this house skin project haunting me for some time now, it's one of those ideas I have in my head that can only be disposed once I have made it.

I have had the cross-point area of the Roland Levinsky building at Plymouth University booked for 12th December a while now.  Have been putting off making and so doing other things like the Still Life show and council house collages.

This weekend was looming and I knew it had to get made now!  Unfortunately it has been cold and not quite going to plan (plans and me don't mix quite well).  What has been good though is I am learning a lot from this trial run, oh I am not making the full house size piece by the way!  It is a slightly scaled down version, enough for me to get a sense of its scale and impact before going on to do a much bigger and more challenging full gable end.

stringy and strange latex

The most important thing I have learned is that latex doesn't like the current cold temperature, not just because it takes longer to cure but it actually cures differently.  It became very stringy, is the best way I can describes it.  The latex did not take a nice cast as it has done before, this has resulted in a less obvious trace of the bricks, the pattern remains, just not the texture of the individual bricks.  Depending on how I feel once this piece is hung in situ then the larger one will definitely be postponed till the spring.

first part of the fabric and latexing up

still waiting for it to dry!

 As you can from the above images, it is quite a big piece but still small in comparison to the size of the house.  This was just the first phase, I wanted to recreate the house shape and given that I didn't want to work at great heights just yet.  Decided I would do the main lower area first and then add the roof peak by removing this first section, reattach lower down.

Today seems a lot colder, still waiting for this last piece to dry enough so I can remove it.  Have come into the warmth to write this blog, be back out again shortly to make sure no 'bored teenagers with nothing better to do on a Saturday' have torn it down!

I have really enjoyed the responses from the local residents.  Of course anyone nailing an enormous piece of fabric to a wall and then painting milky stuff onto it will rouse curiosity.  This gable end faces a lane that has access to other houses and the road so has lots of passers by.  I have been surprised by people smiling and nodding, not enquiring and those who walk pass thinking 'do not make eye contact, do not make eye contact'.  I wonder if I am now considered a bit odd in the area? But of course some have asked me and are very interested in what I am doing, it's funny because my opening line is 'well, I'm an artist...' as that excuses the eccentricities (I hope).

Here are some other lovely images the project has produced so far ...