detail of wallpaper panel, 8 x 3 feet
I collaborated with my friends Jonathan Nodrick and Anita Modha of ROLLOUT Custom Wallpaper in Vancouver on a project that’s currently on view in Toronto. The exhibition, entitled Radiant Dark 2010, is on view January 21-24, and runs concurrently with the Toronto International Design Festival.
The theme for this year’s exhibition is Assets & Values. Our entry, entitled “Oh, That Explains Everything”, consists of 3 digitally printed wallpaper panels, each 8′ high x 3′ wide, that emulate chalkboard diagrams. The drawings, charts and formulas explain everything you would ever want to know about the economy.
Here are the 3 panels…
Oh That Explains Everything, panel 1 of 3
Oh That Explains Everything, panel 2 of 3
Oh That Explains Everything, panel 3 of 3
Now I understand all……
That’s as much as Timothy Geithner understands.
He was there at some of these lectures. He missed the piggy bank talk though.
Why do we have piggy banks and not, say, froggy banks? Something to do with greed? I suspect the pigs get a bad rap.
The flat, repetitive, colorless presentation as wallpaper seems fitting…
David:
A personal note: this summer I attended a parade in Titusville, Pa., honoring the sesquicentennial of the beginning of the oil era with Drake’s well. Among local floats was one sponsored by the Titusville Hospital, and it consisted of a flatbed truck carrying a walking beam like the one featured in your second panel. It seemed an odd choice, but then it was explained that the beam, if properly fitted out, is an excellent device for pulling a patient’s wallet out of his pocket. Those rigs seen around L.A. may be serving a similar purpose.
Steve, I think it’s because you can fit more pennies in a pig :-)
Jay, that’s pretty funny :-)
David:
Looks like a version of the Duck Tape story. A local company that prospered and then was bought out by a larger entity, had made its stash by literalizing the term “duct tape” into Duck Tape. Wiki sez that potters clay was called ‘pygg” in the past, and the term “pygg” jars, used to describe devices for collecting money, was the inspiration for today’s coin oinkers.
Well, Jay, I guess I didn’t understand Everything. I didn’t know about pygg jars.
But the “walking beam” on David’s second panel looks like the frames that stand over mines, to bring up the ore and take down the miners — “head frames.” You see them all over Montana and Nevada — elsewhere, too.
They are definitely more aesthetic, if less efficient, than the new and improved version of mining, which tends to take the whole mountain and douse it in cyanide or cart it to the power plant.
David:
Looks like what takes off lands. In reference to the Rollout designs, when I was a little kid – a very little kid – my bedroom was papered with rather crudely printed little airplanes dating from WWII. Among these was a pattern of B-17s. I can force my memory to imagine that there may have been a few tanks as well.
David:
Concerning the mastic, I wonder if we’re talking about the same or similar stuff. Mastic is used as a general construction adhesive to lay down floor tiles, put up plywood, etc.
June:
Haven’t heard from you for awhile.