Last year I lived in a rental house with two friends from school. The house came empty and it needed to be furnished of course, so we on the hunt for pieces that would suit our adorably kitschy home. We frequently visited thrift stores and scoured Craigslist and Facebook market place for the perfect living room couch, I found the couch pictured a short drive away from our new place. When we arrived, the seller gave a quick history of the piece letting us know it was made in North Carolina, specifically in High Point. While the upholstery was not original, it was done locally by a talented craftsman and I silently wished he had the left over material, as I had just watched the film Garden State, written, directed and starring Zach Braff (more on this later.) The seller then excused himself and returned with a small bag containing the rest of the bolt of fabric. While it was not much, I hoped the fabric would be just enough to make a vest, and it was! Just ahead of my birthday I carefully cut a "big 4" vest pattern from the remnant, until remnant of the remnant resembled nothing more than pile of serger scraps.
The film Garden State is a coming of age story of a detached 20-somethings bit part actor, Andrew Largeman, who returns to his small hometown in New Jersey for his mothers funeral where he meets a free spirited compulsive liar, Sam, played by Natalie Portman. Largeman reconnects with others from his past to confront issues he attempted to leave in Jersey and take steps to be an active participant in life. One of the most iconic scenes from this movie shows Largeman in the bathroom mirror of his childhood home, stood in front of a gaudy pattern wallpaper wearing a matching button down short sleeve shirt. While brief, the scene only being a couple seconds long, is visually stunning and left an impact on me. Since pattern wallpaper has fallen out of fashion, I believed a similar project and subsequent photoshoot would be out of the realm of possibility for me, at least until I was older and could afford to get a custom upholstered piece of furniture, I'm very glad the opportunity came mere months after I had seen the film.
