Scrap Wood Collage

After working day and night with Folk Bag Workbook, it was time to relax. But honestly, I am not very good at doing nothing, so I decided to put my mind in rest by finishing the scrap wood collage. It is a project I have been making with my husband. I talked about the project first time in one of the video blog posts.

Background of the Project

While renovating the studio, we ran out of the ceiling panels. (You can see the hole in the ceiling on the video.) My husband had a box of wooden pieces collected from the past woodworking projects. We decided to use them to create an artwork together.

We had been talking about a project like this for a long time. My husband is an avid woodworker and I love to draw and paint. We are both extremely interested in art and design, so we thought this would be the perfect project for combining our strengths.

Planning

When the project started I drew some sketches and we discussed about them. I focused on the concept of how the wooden pieces should be arranged. I knew I wanted to include paint too, but was not too concerned about it yet. We agreed to create a sort of log cabin quilt type design and organize the wooden pieces by color. My husband drew the size of the artwork on the big piece of paper so that we could understand the proportions more accurately.

Making the Blocks

When we began to make the blocks, it dawned on us that I was too impatient to glue and adjust the pieces. And my husband had not much ideas about how the pieces should be composed visually. So I designed each of the block by organizing the wooden pieces on the table and my husband glued and finished the blocks. As every block is unique and most of the small wooden pieces are different sizes, my husband had a lot of work!

When all the blocks were glued, I wanted to add paint on them. I did not want to cover the wooden surfaces but add some color to the edges. As the theme of the studio is 1960s, I mixed colors from that era and painted each of the edges in different color.

Attaching the Blocks

After the blocks were painted, the artwork was ready to be put in place. My husband had made a wooden panel where he glued each of the blocks.

A Special Feature

If you watched the video carefully, you might have noticed that there is a power plug on the ceiling. The artwork is designed so that there is a flap in one of the blocks that can be slided away!

Lessons Learned?

All in all, this was a great project! This is what I learned here:

1) Let the creativity correct the mistakes.
We could have just ordered few more ceiling panels but we did the exact opposite!
2) Make it meaningful.
Many of the scraps carry memories themselves. And we created more memories by working together.
3) Search for new territories.
My approach for wood was totally different from traditional woodworker’s. The artwork was designed like a modern quilt even if it has been made from wood. For me, various wood species represented various colors. The wood grains were combined so that they formed rhytmic lines and ornaments. I also wanted to create a texture, but not by carving like a woodworker had done, but by playing with the height differences of each piece.

The fourth lesson is:
4) It’s good when it looks like it’s alive.
The end result might look terrible if you look at it like a traditional woodworker. While we made the project, my husband had some problems to get over the fact that every wooden piece does not fit exactly and there will be so much variety on the artwork. But in the end it all looks alive. I love the uneven, colorful edge. Combined with the texture, it all looks very organic even if there are clear, graphic blocks.

While creating this, I began to think of wood as a new art supply. Then I realized that most of the things in the world can be seen as an art supply! Mind-blowing, isn’t it!

P.S. Soon after we finished our artwork, my husband saw a woodworking video about making a wall-decoration from scrap wood. Does it differ from ours? Leave a comment and tell what do you think!