The more I think about this topic, and about the drawing project, the more that everything says "Home" to me.
In the photo of the rescued birdhouse, other elements of Home are the doormats, the threshold, the post waiting to be picked up, the way the hall flooring leads in ... what I know that flooring leads past, and the way it changes into carpet just beyond the stairs -
This next photo is of someone unknown's home. I love their display of carved wooden trees and am intrigued by the things that people but in their window, to be seen from inside and outside but also acting as a barrier between us-inside and them-outside -
Making the home a better place ... and the turmoil or even agony that accompanies the process. Protecting the possessions kept in the home, preventing their contamination with the tiny particles of sawdust, paint, whatever. Better to take them all out of the room to keep them pristine, and aim to cull some in the process of putting things back -
Yet living in one's home is often an automatic process - you don't see the things in there, as long as they let you get around them and carry on a "normal" life. They pile up, you get used to them being there (my inevitable heaps of paper! the unread novels! those few dishes that won't fit into the cupboard!), and it can be a real surprise when someone asks, "what's that doing there?"
These drawings, coloured with coffee, are of my first London home - the shared kitchen -
and my own room, with too many books (the rest hidden under and behind other furniture) and the useless but decorative fireplace, the limited clothes storage, the sofabed, the desk which grew sideways to accommodate that latest thing, the computer -
Fortunately that was before I discovered textile art, so no need for extensive fabric storage.
Ah yes, art ... this is towards an art project. So what might it look like? I'm drawn to this reflection, or layering -
Here it is elsewhere, this time with the addition of holes, seeing into (or through) -
Resonant, somehow, but I'm not sure where it might go.
I'm drawn to paintings of uninhabited interiors, like this one by
Mark Entwisle
and
Hammerskoi did similar, based on a place he had lived in ... a sense of quiet, with interesting light and spaciousness.
The Chelsea Flower Show has a garden this year celebrating the 2015 act about Modern Day Slavery, not such a cosy concept about 'homes'. The garden is by Juliet Sargent, and shows a front door with a doorstep onto floor tiling (a bit like your photograph) which slowly disintegrates into despair. The garden outside represents freedom.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.julietdesigns.co.uk/cfs.php
Another garden this year, called the ‘Antithesis of Sarcophagi’ by Martin Cook and Gary Breeze, is an enormous granite cube with small holes to look through to a garden in its centre, rather like peering through somebody's window into their secret home.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show/Gardens/2016/The-Marble-and-Granite-Centre-–-Antithesis-of-Sarc
The word home represents such a huge concept. Good luck!