Stephanie Lee

Fortpolio Cage

A loose stack of pages becomes an invitation to journal when peeking through the bands of a cage. In this workshop you will make a hinged cage form that will serve as a fort house to a fat stack of folio pages. The pages will be removable, rearrangeable, and reworkable at any time. My cage of pages happens to be rectangular but I will guide you through the methodical and forgiving construction of whatever shape you want to make. I will teach you the techniques of non-frustration-based cage construction, plaster encasement and how to modify the form to hold a bound journal with covers, to serve as a "lid" to a back-cover-only journal or to function as a "skeleton" for a vessel to contain your treasured art and words.

Supply List:

• 2 rolls of plaster gauze; 4 inch width (also called Rigid Wrap, Plaster Cloth, or casting bandage. Wider - 8-9 inches - is fine and one roll would be plenty) find it here
• 1-2 22x30" sheets of watercolor paper. Whatever weight, brand and press you prefer. If you are flying and would like to tear the pages in half or quarters, that would be fine.
• Your favorite colors of acrylic paints - just a few
• Water container for brushes
• 2-4 paintbrushes ranging from small rounds to 2" chip brushes
• brayer
• just a few (5-10) pages of imagery. Cheap black and white photocopies are GREAT! I like larger images best - like a face that takes up most of a page.
• Your favorite glue or gel medium (mod podge is fine)
• Heavy duty wire cutters (for cutting rebar tie wire)
• Heavy duty-ish needle nose pliers. I use my jewelry pliers but dainty little craft tools won’t work well.
• Masking tape (feel free to wrap five feet or so around the end of a pencil and bring that instead of a whole roll)
• 2-3 rags (you will really be glad you have these!! Terry cloth dish towels are my favorite)
• a few (3-5) strips of fabric roughly 3 inches wide x 36 inches long
• Misc. doodads and ribbons for decoration
• brayer
  
  Optional:
• Heat gun or hair dryer
  
  Teacher will bring:
• PLENTY of wire for all students
• All other supplies needed for cage construction