Wisterious

Another feature of the porch set Complete. Done. Finished. A natural wisteria vine that has grown itself as a chair for Rana! This is where she will sit and weave macro close up patterns of butterfly wings on a tapestry style loom with elaborate spider webs nearby in the sun.

I pried apart a store bought twig chair and cut it down to scale by half (ha) (upper left) and then built it back up adding more slats and vine curves. Once the hybrid plant was composed of various materials, the entire structure of it was unified by painting a multi-layer faux wooden patina all over, lower left.

How made: The leaves were made by cutting out pointed oval shapes in a few shades of green crepe paper and twisting them into a row of graduated leaf-pairs. MAJOR TIP/MATERIAL ALERT! brown paper covered floral wire $9 a spool at floral supply stores like Moskatels. (Closest stuff I've seen online.)

It is a natural brown paper wrapped wire that has a nice shape and hold and looks like vine already. I developed a quick system of making wisteria like leaf stems (upper left) that could in turn get twisted onto the old dried tree I was using as the vine base. I wired this onto the halfchair and added reinforced roots to the clump at the bottom.

Once I liked the construction, I slathered on a slurry of Flexall cement mixed with a little water to thin, with a brush (upper right.) Painting it on, letting it dry, and then washing with acrylic layers in brown and taupe. Hitting the whole thing with my secret Walnut Ink to darken and age the crevices when all dry and a top highlight wash of pale taupe. Finished results seen top photos, right.

I wove the vine through the porch roof slats letting a little flower, clusters of hand-painted white silk, made in the same method as the leaves, peer through here and there. I could have kept going and made more of a profusion of greenery and flowers on the wisteria, but somehow it felt right to restrain that to a late season amount rather than having it compete visually with the leaves on the Answer Tree.

It's just a quiet, restful spot to sit and weave. Thanks for reading!