The Spoon House 2.2
Maker Faire Bay Area 2025
September 26th-28th
The Spoon House 2.2 is an update and expansion of last year's installation. This year's Spoon House is still a 20'x10', 2-room structure that utilizes approximately 4500 spoons arranged in free-hanging strands of spoons connected with split rings to form walls and roof, and hundreds more additional spoons that decorate the many pieces of "spooniture" and other decor. A window of clear space is framed by metal pipe in one wall with spoon curtains around it, and doorways of clear space allow visitors to walk through the house.
Two "spoondeliers" hang from the ceiling of the structure, and spoon-decorated furniture inside both rooms welcomes visitors to sit, rest, contemplate and converse.
New items in this year's expansion include spoon garden landscaping, an interactive spoon mailbox outside the house, a spoon bookshelf with topical reading material, and several "spoonstruments" to play on/with inside the house.
The Spoon House is intended to give visitors a place to sit and contemplate Spoon Theory* and what it might feel like to be in an environment where you have all the spoons you could ever possibly need. This particular piece has been slowly evolving over the years with new things added each time it is installed. Maybe someday it will be a Spoon Mansion!
*Spoon Theory, created by Christine Miserandino, is a metaphor that has been used by the disability community and others to represent ideas about energy: having it, running out of it, conserving it, spending or rationing it, and so on. (A “spoon” in this metaphor just refers to a unit of energy.)
Julia Dvorin
I am a self-taught and category-defying artist who works in many different media. I am a writer, painter, actor, costumer, musician, and sculptor—sometimes all on the same day! As a visual artist, I am most interested in the expression of concepts or metaphors through the juxtaposition and interaction of symbols, patterns, textures and colors. I also enjoy using upcycled and out-of-context materials in ways that allow the viewer to see things in a new, unexpected or at least different light. If my recent work has a unifying theme, it is the desire to playfully translate the conceptual into the literal. From 2011-2020 I ran a participatory public art project called “Fly Your Freak Flag High” (FYFFH) where participants made actual freak flags to represent their unique identities from a variety of materials. FYFFH has touched and delighted thousands of people over the years, in places like Burning Man in Black Rock City, NV, Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA and Figment in Oakland, CA (see more at https://www.facebook.com/flyyourfreakflaghigh). Since 2020, I have been working on a variety of large, spoon-centered art projects under the umbrella concept of “Spoon Theory” (see more at https://www.facebook.com/spoontheoryart). I have installed these large spoon pieces at unSCruz (a Burning Man regional in Tres Pinos, CA), Burning Man in NV, and the new Maker Faire Bay Area in Vallejo, CA. Spoon Theory, created by Christine Miserandino, is a metaphor that has been used by the disability community and others to represent ideas about energy: having it, running out of it, conserving it, spending or rationing it, and so on. (A “spoon” in this metaphor just refers to a unit of energy.) Some people, especially those with invisible disabilities or those who find themselves in chronic situations that cause high levels of fatigue and exhaustion, even refer to themselves as “Spoonies”. I became aware of Spoon Theory after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and going through treatments that took away lots of my spoons and taught me the uncomfortable practice of daily spoon hoarding and rationing. I got used to saying things like “sorry, I can’t, I just don’t have enough spoons today.” Though those most difficult days are now behind me, I have certainly been experiencing a similar feeling of exhaustion and constant running out of spoons building up over these last few years with everything that's been going on in the world. I think we are all Spoonies now!
