The House of Fresh Air is a repurposed board book which sits upon a repurposed box lid in order to approximate the appearance of a house. A haiku by Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho reads I felt quite at home/as if it were mine sleeping lazily/in this house of fresh air. The haiku is on the base of the box, as well as on the first page of the book. A watercolor and colored pencil drawing of an epiphyllum cactus was cut into parts to illustrate the pages and the inside of the box. Two bamboo stems from our yard serve to hold the center pages of the book upright. The edges of the pages and the endpapers are in craft papers which utilize various types of leaves including banana plant leaves. The piece measures 5 3/8″ x 5 3/4″ x 5 1/4″. It is a single artwork, no edition.
Bonnie Arant Ertelt 