Treatments | Devin Balara
In an effort to address the fading wall paper on the third floor ghost room Devin Balara created a series of whimsical treatments based on suggestions found in 1960s and 1970s era interior design books from Elsewhere’s collection. Acting as an interior decorator, Balara coordinated the window treatments with the walls to provide a feeling of overall unity in the room and to place these elements directly in conversation with one another. The treatments are composed of fabrics that have been hand silk-screened with the window-grid and flower pattern of the wall paper and in its original colors. They drape, tuck, billow, and swoop across the windows, with subtle humor and drama. To these Balara added a sampler platter’s worth of bobble-ended holdbacks, tasseled ties, shutters, panels, shades, and blinds. The treatments are simultaneously too much and not enough. They are caught up in their own frivolity, filtering out the light that damages the wall paper, but only partially. Thus, they keep in play tensions between decorativeness and functionality, as well as restoration and revision.
