244. The Tourist Does Art #9

My next artpiece created along-the-way has been assembled here in my apartment loft studio in Sofia and is titled "Under the Skin" ... this one uses both rescued material and hand-made paper from a wonderful art supply shop in the city.

The Process begins with me raiding one of many skip bins ( one on almost every corner in the suburbs ... ) - looking for a piece of good clean thin cardboard to use ... This exercise is fraught with danger as the Romanies are the recycling mafia ( throughout most of Europe I think - certainly here in the Balkans ... ) and you have to get up early to rescue anything worthwhile from these bins. And if there is a Romany in sight up or down the street, forget it - unless you are looking for a fight ... !!! ... 

 

Luckily I didn't have a fight on my hands and found a good undamaged piece - and quite interesting shape in itself - and scurried back to my apartment with cardboard firmly tucked underarm ...

My temporary Sofia home has a wonderful  loft with a good solid work bench, comfortable office chair, radio ( and if you are ever in Sofia, tune in to 'radio nostalgique' for a fantastic musical trip back in time - all my teenage favourites from the 60s 70s and 80s ... !!! ... ) - and overhead are two large roof-windows giving me plenty of natural light and warmth and a view of snow-capped Vitosha = a perfect workspace ...

The cardboard piece is un-assembled and cut up into usable sizes - then all materials, plus my few tools of trade are at the ready for a bit of creative thinking and working ... the base is a square of pine - also from the art shop ...

Using all-purpose glue and a stack of Bulgarian encyclopedias from the bookshelves in my apartment for weights, it's all go ...

 

Another 'find' at a nearby junk shop was an old Bulgarian 1947 novel titled "Under the Skin" ( roughly translated by Google ) - hence the title for the artwork - the pages of which I tear into strips and roll up into scrolls that are firmly tied with black cotton ...

... beautiful hand-made papers from the art shop ... 

Once the walls are in place and the windows are cut out, I cover the solid areas with the fine white paper that has green fibre pressed through it - this gives me the effect of derelict and abandonment - cobwebs and green vines covering the structure ...

 

 
 ... Under the Skin ...

... view inside before the roof is fixed into position ...

 

The rooms, filled with stacks of stories from yesteryear take on a mysterious 
and ghost-like presence when viewed through the almost-covered-with-neglect windows ...  

... Now all I have to do is find a home for it ...