Sidewall (USA)

Jeff Colson, Sarah Perry, and Robert Therrien were commissioned by Jerry Sohn in 2006 to create wallpaper for his mid-century modern house in southern California. The papers were never produced for the commercial market and this is the only sample of Colson’s design in existence outside the paper installed in the donor’s house.
Perry is a sculptor who frequently works with commonplace objects. Her first major art pieces were large-scale gorillas fashioned out of rubber tire scraps found along the Los Angeles freeway. In 2001, she constructed a nine-foot-tall rocket ship from the bones of horse and cattle bones. The rocket ship may be the inspiration behind her rib bones wallpaper.
While the majority of papers in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection were mass produced for residential or commercial use, we also have papers that were not intended for commercial sale; among these are a group of papers produced for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton (1820s); papers designed by A. W. N. Pugin for the Houses of Parliament (ca. 1850); and Andy Warhol’s Cows (1966), which was created as an installation piece. Papers designed by artists are a growing and integral part of the museum’s collection of wallcoverings. This is one of four Sohn-commissioned papers proposed for acquisition. As these papers are not available elsewhere, this would be a significant acquisition.

Sidewall (USA); Designed by Sarah Perry (American, b. 1956); screen-printed paper; Overall: 96 x 76 cm (37 13/16 x 29 15/16 in.); Gift of Jerry and Eba Sohn; 2007-6-3