House of Cards

Created as the central prop for the constructed narrative photograph The Builder, this 10 foot high house of cards was on display for my 2017 Gallery4Culture exhibition The Idea and the Thing Itself.  Once I determined how many cards would be needed for one layer, my brother Doug developed an algorithm to calculate the total amount needed (7.5 x N^2 + 0.5N).  Bicycle Playing Cards agreed to sponsor the project in-kind and provided me with the necessary 14,976 cards.  

Constructing the tower took slightly over one year.  It was built in layers so it could travel to the photo shoot location, and here you see it still holding up remarkably well, despite having been transported, assembled, disassembled, and stored several times (with decreasing care once the shoot was successful).