2016 Little House

2016 Little House Silent Auction

OffCenter's Albuquirky 2016 Little House Silent Auction will be held this year in Albuquerque at Sumner & Dene Gallery at 517 Central NW on Friday, May 6 from 5-8pm.  Help fund OffCenter Community Arts Center by coming out to the grand event and purchasing one of the 100+ little houses donated by Albuquerque artists.  The silent auction will be in conjunction with downstairs openings for artists Frank McCulloch and Mark Horst.

My 2016 Little House

This year I was faced with the challenge of creating my Little House while recovering from a torn ligament in my left thumb.  Everyone comments to me, "Well, you're right handed, aren't you?"  Yes, but YOU tape your left thumb to the rest of your left hand and try going about your life this way and see what it is like to navigate through life without an opposable thumb!  Buttons, zippers, driving a stick shift, unlocking the front door, etc.

Okay, back to the subject.  After seeing a photo in a magazine of little cabin in the woods, my first inclination was to make a birch bark cabin with a corrugated roof.  And while I'm talking about getting started, I've been asked what one of the "blanks" looks like that OffCenter provides to us artists.  Here's a photo -- it's basically two pieces of scrap 4x4 with a chimney.    

I sat with the idea of a birch bark cabin for a few days and couldn't get real excited about it, so my next thought was that since I love making little houses with button-covered roofs,  (Check out my blog for two of my button-covered roof houses.)  I'd do another button-covered roof house!!  That idea went by the wayside because after four huge garage sales this past summer to downsize and reorganize all the stuff in my studio, I couldn't find my buttons (which have now been found).

So, one morning before getting out of bed (a lot of my ideas come to me either in the morning before I am fully awake or while I am in the shower) the idea for the roof of my little house came to me --  I could use the Italian paper my friend Eric had given me -- "Grafiche Tassotti"-- of vintage Italian tarot cards about the size of dominoes.

  

Yahoo!  I'd get started right away by painting the roof of the house black and the body of the house a cream color, then going on to roofing.

I used strips of 4 tarot cards to create rows of "shingles" for the roof .  I couldn't bear to cut the tarot cards in half to create a normal shingled roof with staggered shingles -- so all you roofers out there who are reading this will know that the courses of shingles are indeed improperly laid.

You'll see the completed roof again in many of the subsequent photos, so I won't add one here.

So, what next???????  What would be the theme of this year's house????  Then the idea came to me -- I'd make a fortune teller's house -- Madame Ruth's house at 34th and Vine in the song "Love Potion No. 9."   

So, off to dig around in the studio and round up materials to start the real work.  

First I added the windows and doors to the house, followed by adding exterior decoration relating to fortune telling.

The front of the house has a door which opens to the interior (showing Madame Ruth's living room), a "Fortune Teller" sign hanging by chains from the eaves of the house, a potted palm, and Madame Ruth's crazy cat guarding the doorway.

The path leading up to the front door of Madame Ruth's house is made from smashed bottlecaps from the Left Hand Brewing Company which are surrounded by little little glass pebbles.  I thought the bottlecaps were perfect to complement the palm-reader aspect of the piece!

The house sits on a 10x10" piece of foam core board covered with "grass" made from green hand-made paper with lots of little natural inclusions.  Crocus pop up here and there in the grass, and Madame Ruth has a wrought iron sign at the outset of her walkway.

If you look into the window on the side of the house on Vine, you'll see Madame Ruth with her crystal ball.  There is an astrological wheel on the gable, and metal snake and skull house decorations.  The red and black trim on the house is some wonderful ribbon I had found in the dollar bin at Michael's a couple years ago.

The back side of the house has a picture window with a neon "Fortune Teller" sign, a metal bird house decoration, and a free standing palm-reader's hand.

The final side of the house has a sun/moon symbol on the gable, a window in which you see a shelf loaded with bottles of Love Potion No. 9, a metal iguana house decoration, and another potted plant.

Madame Ruth's gazing ball is on this side of the house in a rockery created from turquoise stones.  The rockery is surrounded by "logs" made from sliced sticks.  The (marble) gazing ball sits on a pedestal made from an itty bitty black spool.  

The 4th and Vine street signpost is made from a painted dowel stuck in an upside-down little wooden flower pot, with a jewelry finding holding the street signs.

I made a small boo-boo in that I glued down the Fortune Teller sandwich board at the base of the street sign before I added the straps which keep the sandwich board from doing the splits.  My choice was to either forego the straps or fold myself into a very weird position and attach the straps with tweezers.  Being a person who really likes completion, you know what I did.

So, that pretty much describes the entire piece, and here's one final photo showing the entire yard and street sign:

And, one final note: I  need to brag about the fact that this year's project was created entirely from things on hand in my studio -- I bought absolutely nothing new for the project.