El Anatsui

I am obsessed. Years ago, I saw an image of this wall of wonder in a magazine and promptly tore it out and put it front and center on my wall of inspiration:

Of course, I lost the article with all of the info on who divined this rippling, metallic cloth. A few years down the line, when I was asked to do a space for the Skid Row Housing Trust’s latest building, I thought back to this image and decided to make a curtain in a similar style, with the help of my fellow M. Design-ers, Kate and Amy. My mistakes were multiple but the top two were 1) my unfettered optimism that this would be easy and 2) not understanding how the original was fabricated. I thought it was constructed of flattened bottle caps but alas, I was wrong. The ensuing three days of pounding hundreds of bottle caps flat, drilling tiny holes in them and attaching them with jewelers rings has gone down in M. Design history as one of the worst ideas I have ever had. Oh well… Read the rest of this post »