Dawn Stetzel / Artist in Residence at the Sou'wester: Dawn's Process: Making Cardboardhouse

laying out frame and wheels in order to visualize potential chassis for cardboardhouse

layout to determine size of cardboardhouse, 2 pieces of cardboard from new sauna door the sou'wester was installing as I arrived
(note the one cardboard piece aligned on ground at studio doorway, doorway also a factor in cardboardhouse size)

sou'wester sauna door box for floor, perfect size, perfect timing
(this box met my criteria for material selection being of and from the specific place)

slots through the floor for trailer wheels

sou'wester sauna box now the floor of cardboardhouse, and start of sides

nighttime run for cardboardhouse building materials
(tent pole found on July 5th beach cleanup + duct tape + 2 huge blanket pins = dragging apparatus)

nighttime cardboard collecting (journey after dark due to noise made by dragging cardboard, not as much vehicle
traffic on the road, and to reduce the spectacle possibility of this odd cardboard-sled-drag-bike thing)

to me this material felt tied to this location specifically and to some extent the people here too, maybe inherent thoughts of house/home at times also

cardboardhouse sides (woodglue-is-good-glue was one of my mantras)

using gravity, weight and well placed pool cue until the woodglue dries
(lots of sou'wester campers thought I was nuts and this would never work from a practical and engineering standpoint....wonder why?)
(cardboardhouse was made in a very public place, this space with continuous flow of folks playing pool, using restrooms & showers, having campfires and just enjoying the sou'wester grounds)

taking apart the walker to attach it to the bike trailer frame (conceptual component to my choice of using the walker, which I found at Habitat For Humanity, another important aspect to me right now)
(bike trailer had many lives, one of which was my mobile flip-flop shop and beachfound footwear line from long ago)
(adding wood cutouts to walker handles to make weight of house push the frame down and balance the chassis)

testing size and wheels

using weights (paving stones borrowed from sou'wester campfire ring) woodglue drying in stages

lining up bike (new bike loan from wonderful local neighbor Michael) to test cardboardhouse size

cardboardhouse shed roof

cardboardhouse needed to be as big as I could make it and still pull it on my bike, and get it into and out of the studio

barely fits into and out of the studio doorway

finishing gluing the shed roof and starting to paint

green paint from garage sale free pile (used all the green paint on this house)

bottom-of-the-can unwanted sou'wester paint and green paint from garage sale free pile
(my choice of materials as close to local and low-resource as possible)
(I knew my cardboardhouse would be odd so wanted it to be of this place and blend in as much as possible)

upside down working on shed roof

view of floor, cardboardhouse upside down using gravity working on roof

house fits inside studio if flipped on its side
(I pushed and pulled, flipped and turned cardboardhouse in and out of the studio many times)

cutting cardboardhouse door

woodglue door

one ladder inside cardboardhouse and one outside in order to glue back wall using gravity
(someone fed me heavy paving stones through wheel slots and then I chucked them out when I was done)