RoomHop is back, this time with a DIY/modern art/bricolage special from Watt, courtesy of Carolyn Ruvkun. If your room needs Hopping, contact us at tips@bwog.net with a picture.

“I imagine my room to be a giant junkyard, but not so dirty,” says Patrick Han of the Watt double he shares with Shao-Wen Ang. The “garbage aesthetic,” as Shao-Wen calls it, starts at their front door plastered with an original art piece. “We broke some pens and splattered the ink, then stuck a blunt knife through an orange.”

The interior, too, makes creative use of dried fruit. While most people throw away Clementine peels and old tea bags, Patrick and Shao-Wen choose to feature them. They unhinged their window guards and weaved fruit peels, playbills, and photos through the diamond slits. “The window covering is a useful way to hold things,” says Patrick.

Patrick sleeps under a canopy of colorful tea bags, citing their aromatic qualities. Though he regrets that they “eventually run out of the smell.”

The pair’s walls are covered with Shao-Wen’s photos, surrealist Magritte posters, and Styrofoam squares the two painted. “The people next door were having an event in Lerner and we got the leftover Styrofoam squares from their set,” Patrick explains. Scattered along the walls and ceiling, the painted squares resemble scraps of stained glass or colorful tiles. Shao-Wen points out that some of the squares “have little stories behind them,” like a dog in the sunset or a starburst.

The only blank wall in their room is reserved for movie screenings, though they plan to cover the corner of their screening wall with more of Magritte’s art.

Patrick says his favorite thing “would have to be the statue of Mao,” which he outfitted in a champagne cork covering and a hat flourished with a flower and little comb. Like everything else in the room, the statue “has sort of evolved” over the year.

And the recorder on the table in the center of the room? “It’s just for keeping track of the day,” explained Patrick. “Because sometimes you don’t remember everything from during the day. Then you record the small things and can capture all those lost moments and fit them into your life, like pieces of a puzzle. It’s like a diary without having to write.” Perhaps the same motivation to record little moments applies to the pair’s eclectic brand of interior decoration. Just as the pair accumulates random tchotchkes for their eclectic space, Patrick gathers various conversations on his recorder.

“It’s a little creepy, actually,” Shao-wen admits.