LOCKDOWN…
What a difference a few weeks make. This is a crazy time…. Just struggling to get any perspective on life at the moment. At least we have art I suppose….
My MFA exhibition was meant to open, basically the day we went into lock down. It is still there in the darkness. Waiting…. The irony of a project that was about globalization, labour and the flow of commodities around the world, now being itself in lock down has been pointed out and is not lost on me. In some ways I think this is perfect. I had called the exhibition “The Way We Live Now.” I have retrospectively renamed it: “The Way We Lived.”
Even my Handshake project has taken on new resonance. It was always to be an exploration of spatial relationships, drawing upon the actual relationship I am developing with my mentor on the other side of the world. How do we experience space and come to know places we have never seen. Now of course the digital nature of our relationship is common to us all so I’m finding that really interesting….
I’m trying to keep busy, mainly reading: Richard Sennett’s book “Building and Dwelling.” It’s really great- the relationships we have with the built urban environment and each other. Gabi has been great and we have traded ideas and sources/authors/artists, so I’m really appreciative of her contributions. There’s always so much to explore….
I’ve been exploring some new ideas in the studio, making do with the scraps of material at hand. I don’t have a torch, or anything really other than files and pliers, scraps of wire and off cuts of brass.
Gate
But I’ve been wanting to explore the notion of thresholds for a long time so I’ve been working on a little gate. This place marker that demarcates space. I’m quite into this idea of gates and now I’ve moved into thinking about the posts- the frame around the gate: another kind of threshold. So I’ve been making a set- two pendants- one the gate; the other, the posts which are embedded in concrete. Thresholds not just of space, but also time- this historical moment: Pre Covid-Post Covid. And I keep returning to this verse, which now seems so relevant…
Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few that be that find it. (Matthew 7:14)
The concrete is still setting, so I will wait and see….