Thinking outside our little boxes

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who is aching to make a break from the indoors and take it all outside. Now that the weather is improving (well, theoretically at this writing) thoughts go to how to set up an outdoor setup for sketching, fabricating, painting or plotting our next moves or just playing with materials.

In my neck of the woods, where the studio is often someplace at home due to insanely prohibitive rental fees, personal outdoor space is more likely a balcony and one that’s none too private either. 

It’s a challenge to carve out a little outdoor sacred space in our vertical built environment. And even if we’re allowed to create some delineation, on the Wet Coast there’s no point hanging billowy curtains or installing anything that would sag and sog at the first spring shower. We’re looking for something attractive yet weather-proof. 

These are the kinds of things I think about when I scan all those online image collections on Tumblr, Houzz and Pinterest. There’s no shortage of ideas for ideal outdoor sanctuaries, but I like the ingenious solutions, the ones that make use of all the excess lying around, like the flip-flop bead curtain composed of plugs of the foam soles in Nairobi:

This blogger composed a collage of flip-flops found on a Nairobi beach during a single morning walk, as well as the pic of the storefront with the fun foam curtain.

It’s the perfect case of necessity being the mother of invention, and an inspiration to make use of what’s in over-abundance locally, relying on little or no tools in the making.
And since we’re in the artwork-making world, we’d rather invest in supplies than decor anyway.

It reminds me of this little project I made a few years back, after I was searching for a way to deal with the ubiquitous plastic bags that are not accepted in my building’s recycling bins. I shred the bags into roughly two-inch strips with a rotary cutter (scissors work fine too), tied them together into strands, then tied one end of each strand to each eye of a simple ceiling-mounted curtain rod. Voila!: a blossom-y sun-filtering retractable screen that to this day has withstood the elements, and grows as bags accumulate.