8th
my wall art finally arrived: part 1
I’ve debated for a long while what I should put on my large, bare walls but long story short I’ve found the perfect thing:
It may not look like much besides some old folded pieces of paper right now, but it will eventually be unfolded into a vintage 1969 7UP & Yellow Submarine billboard advertisement. You heard that right - billboard - as in 25’ by 10’. As shown by this stamp:
The poster is composed of 12 sections each 59” by 42”. I can’t wait to unfold it all and post it up on the wall. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done as it has been sitting “hard-folded” in a box for over 25 years. (Oh how much I wish it was rolled instead of folded.) I plan to unfold the sections gradually and usher their straightening using some humidity and then possibly books and a cool iron. I have not yet decided if I will want to back the sections or if free-hanging them will work. If anyone has some advice on this process I am all ears.
The first step I have done is to unfold all of the soft folds and hang each section, still hard-folded in half, on a jerry-rigged clothesline in my bathroom. I have the hot water on to raise the relative humidity to over 85% to facilitate unfolding.
My next step will be to remove the remainder of the soft folds hopefully using an iron & books, before unfolding each piece one more time. I am particularly worried that the paper will rip at the intersections of the folds because of the two-fold directions so I am proceeding slowly.
For those of you that may wonder how I came to acquire such a unique treasure I must credit my father. My dad found this poster in an apartment attic in Louisville KY in the mid 1970s. Since then, half of it saw the light of day on my father’s ceiling until he moved to college and has been in a box ever since aside from making a brief, full debut for a photo shoot in 1984.
Stay tuned for more updates.
