Blog 30: Wall Art

The idea of doing a relief started when we went to look at another strawbale house that had a tree of life relief on an external wall - it looked amazing!

So we thought we could do something similar on the west wall of the house, to the north of the garage door. A native tree that is everywhere in the Maraetotara valley, the cabbage tree -  it is an interesting tree, like in the Dr Seuss books.

I organised a date with our artist friend Vicky over the easter school holidays, and Andrew and Pat prepared the wall and the clay/straw plaster ready for the art work to begin! 

It was a lot of fun to do, moulding the plaster and sticking it to the wall.  We had to use the scaffolding for the high part of the wall and Vicky who is scared of heights was brave and went for it. 

I did mainly the lower part where I could reach and gave feedback to Vicky if what she did looked ok from a distance.

I made the trunk at the bottom quite thick and at certain point the bottom 50cm just fell off!! I guess the layers of plaster beneath were still quite wet and it got too heavy. So I started again, this time with small amounts of plaster and adding a little bit more every few days. Success :-) 

We are very pleased with the result, it looks amazing coming up the drive and you can also see it from the road.

After it is dry a 10mm coat of lime needs to be applied along with the rest of the wall, and it could be tricky with the leaves so close together. 

I will keep you posted as it evolves..