The Dream Community: Fantasy House Party

All professional photos courtesy of Ian Chen.

Fantasy House

TEAM 1 SEATTLE ARTISTS DESIGN 4 ELEVATOR LOBBIES

Anika and Zak hail from a small island off of the coast of Seattle. John and Bobert are their buddies from Seattle proper who work together in a glass studio. Zak is a blacksmith who looks like Thor and wears a utili-kilt and makes really beautiful things out of metal. Anika excels at glass sand casting and seems to know a little about everything.

John and Bobert's specialty is showing their wands to each other. They blow each other's wands and spin them around til they're so hot that is seems like their bulges are going to explode. Sometimes they even let other people help while they're blowing each other and then the bulges get really big until they can finally get their giant balls off. It's so awesome to watch.

JAMES BOND PARTY IN ELEVATOR LOBBIES

The Seattle crew was asked to make sculptures for 4 elevator lobbies. Each artist chose a project and had to accomplish their goal within one month's time and every piece was a collaboration. To celebrate their project's finish, we had a James Bond party in the elevator lobbies.

PIECE 1: ANNIKA'S NAKED LADY SAND-CAST

PIECE 2: JOHN'S FORMS

PIECE 3: BOBERT'S WATER BIRD

PIECE 4: ZAK'S SCONCES

ADDITIONAL PIECE: MARBLE

TEAM 2: NEW ORLEANS LADIES DESIGN BOUTIQUE APARTMENT

At some point this past month, I looked at my reflection in the mirror in the bathroom in which we were working and thought, "If I told myself that at the age of 25 I would be doing an Ernst Haeckel bathroom mosaic with 4 gamelan musicians from Bali, I wouldn't have believed it". But there it was, and I liked it.

As a working artist and someone who regularly makes ridiculous choices in order to be able to create my own art, I found the idea of making lamps hard to digest. Sometimes it's nice to be taken out of your comfort zone. I was delighted to welcome my friend Jade Brandt back to work on one of these Fantasy Houses. Our mission was to create 4 lighting fixtures, one mural, 2 mosaics and a sculpture. During our concept meetings, there was a lot of focus on Egyptians, Hello Kitty, Japanese color schemes centering around the colors teal and plum, boobs and trees.

The mosaic on the floor of the balcony is borne of Jade's Japanese color palate with a bit of an Arabesque shape. Working in this new palate was so much fun. It was one of those great collaborative moments in which you discover an entirely new mode of operating.

Jade's inspiration for this chandelier was underwater salvage. Jade found these great milk glass beads at the Taipei second hand market and we went with it.

The bird lamp we threw together using a lot of fodder that we had sitting around the community. We found the lamp frames at the scrapyard and welded them together to make bird cages. Jade carved the bird bodies and decorated them. We covered the lamp in tiny green leaves.

This lamp gained the title "The Butcher takes a Wife". We made a steel pantie frame and coated the fabric and lace in epoxy resin then attached bottles that we melted in the kiln and pieces of glass on which we transferred pictures that we had taken at the local meat market. This was Jade's and my favorite but none else really seems to get it.

This Wardian Case is my second project to come out of the metal shop. It is supposed to be two cranes bending together. Inside reside some of Taiwan's most beautiful succulents, our pet giant snail, Little Jerry, and three mosaic nuclear bombs.

Our bathroom mosaic was inspired by Ernst Haeckel. We wanted to build a mermaid tank and ended up designing a bathroom. Voila.

Party #2: Christmas Eve

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the Fantasy House, the sugarplum fairy helped the bad little boys and girls to eat too many cookies and cheese balls and get very fat!