A young friend married a ballet dancer from Japan. To wrap our gift I reached for two scraps of paper that were very different. The light-colored piece with angled stripes is actually the back-side of fancy foil paper. The dark-colored piece is a small Japanese retail bag, cut open and laid flat.
I then reached for something I have been saving for a while, a piece of under-carpet anti-skid foam with a very-dimensional checkerboard pattern of holes. I did not even have to cut it; the shape was already perfect to a) join along the horizontal line where the paper fragments join, and b) bring a new line into my developing system of angles.
I poked around the studio looking for paper scraps and objects to continue my emerging constructivist theme and the steady increase in contrasting textures. Finally I discovered a box of wood fragments on which I had added brush strokes to put excess paint to good use in the daily process of making oil paintings. I selected one and found a good position for it; one of the things the positioning does here is to cover a small rip in the blue-stripe paper.
Before gluing the board in place I rummaged through my ribbon boxes and found a wide gauze ribbon scrap with red edges. I set this along the angled line which the wood bar would later assume, wrapping it around the back, thus making some reference to traditional wrapping customs. The existence of the ribbon also makes the wooden bar assume the role of a bow. I glued the ribbon and the wood bar in place.
Last of all I consulted with my son on the Japanese greeting and we came up with this phrase which I believe says, “congratulations on your honorable wedding.” I printed it on card stock and attached it to the wrap. The final detail was to write the couple’s first names on a little label and apply it to the gauze ribbon.
The variety of patterns and textures, composed in angles over a classic two-piece base wrap demonstrates the pleasing complexity that can develop in wrap-art improvisation.