This past weekend, replacing our non-descript aluminum screen door unexpectedly rose to the top of the to do list. We have a fairly long list of adjustments that are on our to do list. Some are just very functional and "have to be done" stuff like plumbing and fans and drainage... Other things on the list are about making the house feel like us, so that it will echo our souls and make us smile in every nook and cranny. This is our goal. When we moved into our house a year and a half ago we screwed an old window sash on the front of the aluminum door just to remind us that we had other plans, but that the time would come to change the door. Andrea and I agreed that this weekend was the time to make entering our house feel more like us.
We replaced the door with a salvaged door. In addition to my own stash of found doors, I have a favorite "junk guy" who is the last of a dieing breed of collectors. You remember the kind...piles of disorganized stuff jumbled into a poorly lit barn that you get the pleasure to root through and find your own treasure. This one came from his pile not mine. After sanding it up and making a screen insert for it I hung it on buffed up vintage hinges. I smile now as I go through my front door. The three dimensional clunk as it closes smoothly into its stop makes a satisfying screen door (gentle) slam. This sound sends echoes of childhood summers into my ears. Fleeing the confines of the house to the green woods is always better punctuated with a screen door slam.
These are some other doors or door parts that are either functional or wall pieces that I've done over the years.
A door is magical thing.
A portal that we take for granted.
An entry into and an exit from new and sacred space.
Transformation.
I have had a long artistic relationship with doors. It started back in the mid 1980's with a dream about caves, but that's a story to tell more fully some other moment. Since that time I have had an ongoing dialog with door "openings."
In addition to the subject matter often being about the process of transformation and making visible the invisible, I have found myself taking doors as whole objects or as in their parts as the support for my painting/assemblages.
Some of them were wonderful vintage doors,
some hollow core doors,
some an amalgamation of objects that become doors.
And now, I must open mine and go out!