My goal is to create an interactive, painted and sculptural blanket fort which will be in the center of "The Game Room" at Highfield House in Falmouth, MA, in April 2014.

The curator, Annie Dean, of this historic house museum approached me to install one of my large life-size stacked furniture wall painting installations. (not attached but can be seen at http://candicesmithcorby.com/walls.html ) After seeing the proposed room and describing my recent work with blanket forts, my interest was piqued by the possibility of creating a new 3-d work that encompasses painting, sculpture, and an interactive element. The room has a high ceiling with beams and a skylight which physical objects can be attached to.
At my last exhibition at the Ellen Miller Gallery, I made an actual blanket fort (see images) and was left with some ongoing questions/interests- How could painting and the real be merged more believably? In this exhibited fort, I hand-painted a sheet but used other real blankets and fabric. In the images of the paintings, there is a freedom of construction without having to adhere to gravity, as well as perspective. For the new fort, I am interested in using life-size illusionistically painted images of blankets in lieu of actual blankets. Furniture will be used for structural needs (real and illusory) and may be physically altered and painted to support the blur between the 2 and 3 dimensions.

A conceptual and physical reference for me are Roman fresco wall paintings in which the architecture and illusionistic paintings expand the understanding of the space. http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/247017?rpp=60&pg=1&rndkey=20131013&ao=on&ft=*&deptids=13&what=Paintings&pos=57

This new fort will be interactive in that visitors, including children, will be able to crawl and move through the fort, capturing the belief of playful transport that we often lose in the day to day duties of our adult lives.