I was lucky enough to be one of the artists selected to construct a piece for the Streamside Lanterns installation in September as part of the Still Moon Arts Society Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival 2024.

I chose to create a modern twist on a lantern by constructing a lightbox featuring a Vancouver skyline utilising silhouetted versions of many of the buildings featured previously in my Vancouver papercut mural.

The piece is 5ft wide and 1ft deep and the outer shell is constructed out of 3/4” thick hexagonal core cardboard that I repurposed from some large shipping boxes that had been received by a local pilates studio. To construct the box I treated the cardboard as if it were wood - ripping it down with the table saw, cutting mitres with a chop saw and weilding a large glue gun in place of a drill.

The buildings featured are laser cut from a 6mm chipboard and sit in 3 layers in order to create depth. Lighting is provided by 8 individually controlled LED strips diffused with a double layer of tracing paper stretched across a cardboard frame. The lighting was a particular challenge because the whole piece had to be battery powered - to facilitate this I utilised a power bank phone charger that is distributed via 2x USB hubs - it lasts for about 2 hours but it could be converted to be powered by USB via wall plug instead.