Bill Davenport

Forever Rafter

April 7 - May 14, 2006

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Forever Rafter is my fourth and largest foam piece. The first was Two Paintings on a Rock in the 2004 TWANG show at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, followed by Dark Door at CACHH's Gallery 125 later that year, then Cuckoo Clock in New Texas Painting at Diverseworks in 2005. For this show, I wanted to make something very big, but I didn't want to store it afterwards. I still have Superconducting Supercollider, from 1994, stored in my studio. It takes up a lot of space.

Forever Rafter is not a replica of a specific builing. It is loosely based on photographs of timber-framed and half-timbered buildings culled from Google image searches.

The title is a pun I made up to use on the invitation, since I couldn't have a picture of the piece. Trompe l'ear instead of Trompe l'oeil.

All the materials and tools for this show came from Home Depot. Forever Rafter is made of Foamular brand expanded polystyrene insulation board (pink board) made by Owens-Corning. It is commonly used as insulating sheathing in building construction. It comes in 4x8 foot sheets. According to OSHA, there are no significant health risks in working with it, unless you eat it, which OSHA says it is "unlikely".

The foam is cut with very sharp blades. A standard utility knife is used to make straight cuts, a flexible snap-blade type knife for the carving. The foam is assembled with low-temperature hot glue (high-temperature glue melts the foam). It is then painted with flat interior latex house paint.

The rectangular posts and beams are hollow boxes of foam. The posts are actually supporting the big overhead beams.

The installation was fabricated beam by beam in a temporary industrial-sized studio in the Heights, then trucked to the gallery and assembled. It took approximately seven weeks to build, beginning February 12 and ending just before the opening on April 7. It took three days to install in the gallery.

Forever Rafter used up 76 sheets of foam (a stack about head high), 168 sticks of hot glue, and 35 knife blades and 7 gallons of paint. The total cost for materials was $979.92.

In addition, studio rent was $600 for two months, truck rental $95. I paid Anthony, the guy who mows my lawn, $50 one day to help me paint things brown, and David Ubias $75 to h elp me install it. I've spent about $1800 on this project. I expect I'll get nothing but personal satisfaction, but that's art.

I have had jobs making theater and film sets several times, first in 1979, when I made a Thai Buddha from aluminum foil for a production of The King and I at the Lazy Susan Dinner Theater in Woodbridge, Virginia. The peak of my film career came in 1994, when I helped transform a gate on the Hardy Toll Road into the Mexican border for The Chase with Charlie Sheen, which you can still get on video.

Thanks to Katy Heinlein for sharing her space, to my sister Jenny Mitchell and my mom, Marian Davenport, for help with background painting. More thanks to my wife, Francesca Fuchs for taking on extra child watching during this project and special thanks to Inman Gallery for never once asking what they are going to sell.

Bill Davenport, April, 2006