Building Blocks

Four Paul Dodd 6x6 entries for 2015 Rochester Contemporary 6x6 Show
Four Paul Dodd 6×6 entries for 2015 Rochester Contemporary 6×6 Show

About ten years ago we helped Pete and Shelley put a roof on their new Adirondack home. They were both afraid of heights and probably still are. There was no plywood involved, the roof was sheeted with rough cut cedar boards. I love the look and feel of this stuff and the smell when you cut it and all the cutting was done by hand because they are off the conventional grid. They bought the wood at a local saw mill and I asked them if they could bring me some the next time they came our way. I put the wood in the garage and have not used it until now.

I went out there to pick out a piece to cut into six inch lengths thinking I would do my RoCo 6×6 entries on wood this year. The wood was not as wide as I remembered. My pieces were more like six by five. So I glued two pieces together and cut it down to six by sixes. The seams were clearly visible so I thought maybe I would use them as a horizon line. But what to paint?

I usually wait until the last minute to do these things but I had a day or so to think about it. The wood pieces are a little over an inch thick so they are three dimensional. I considered dipping them in the Rustoleum oil paint that we use to paint our metal lawn chairs and horseshoes but I didn’t have time for one color to dry before I dipped the other. I knew I wanted to switch colors at the horizon line because the wood grain changes so radically. I settled on hand painting them with colors straight out of the tube. They remind me of the building blocks we played with as kids.

Peggi’s entries are faces, two of them, our friends’ faces, and they look great.

3 Comments

3 Replies to “Building Blocks”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *