When Good Ideas Go Bad

I thought I'd move from bland house painting to something a little more creative -- something without an instruction book. Not always wise for this artisan.

Two streams of thought collide. First, I was inspired by Ray Johnson's collage-filled life in "How To Draw A Bunny." My life should be Art.

Second, my bathroom door is ugly -- a flat panel of glossy fake wood. I should have replaced it along with the rennovation, but there are four other identical doors on the stair landing and it didn't seem like the right time (& I hate painting 6-panel doors, even though I love them).

Inspiration: why not turn the door into a collage? Just the inside -- an inspiration panel -- something to contemplate while I sit on the pot. (The pictures I see now in the fake woodgrain would give Freud nightmares.)

I did a cursory deglossing. Dug out an old tub of wallpaper paste from the garage and some Pakistani newspapers from a file drawer. I'd start with a base of exotic newspaper pages from 1992. Up they went.

4:30 P.M. So far so good. Not gorgeous, but full of potential. Time for a break.

7:30 P.M. Oh-oh. The newspapers are curling off and the wallpaper paste flaking to the floor. Damn.

So much for that idea.

What went wrong? I think I didn't degloss the surface enough. I should have sanded and primed.

Hmm... if I'm going to do that, maybe I'll forget the old newspapers and take a different tack...

Art marches on...

4.7.06

 

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