This week I managed to quell a steadily growing sense of guilt by making time to meet with Cherry Tenneson (long term collaborator, “Tenneson and Dale”). It was the best kind of meeting – short, but productive. Within 45 minutes, we had planned our next piece of work. It was incredibly satisfying. Although we don’t think in the same way, we know each other well enough now that joining creative forces seems natural. No shilly-shally: we meet in the middle.
I’ve had to devote a fair amount of time to other art stuff recently (hence the guilt about T&D). Last weekend, an incredible weight was lifted from my shoulders when I survived massive nervousitis caused by presenting at Birkbeck College’s conference on “Book Destruction”. There were many fascinating and informative papers given, I learned a lot and generally felt humbled by all the incredibly knowledgeable people there. (Especially fantastic to spend a day with a room full of people who really LOVE books.)
Whilst in London, Sarah (the architectural writer I am also collaborating with) gave me a quick tour of the architects’ offices in which she works. The hugely fancy premises are right on the River. One whole wall is floor-to-ceiling super deep shelving, rammed full of architectural models. I felt like I was at the starting point for a Borges short story, as these mini worlds competed against the towering panoramic view of London from the offices’ huge windows. I got a strange sensation of shifting in scale: I felt like a lumbering giant next to the models, but also like a insignificant gnat next to the skyline. On returning to Rogue Studios on Tuesday to photograph our Exchange-Experimentation-Collaboration show, the memory of this feeling really helped me appreciate Yu-Chen and Geoff’s work even more. I thought about how at the opening Geoff’s daughter had made Yu-Chen’s H structure seem much bigger than it was; how Yu-Chen had picked up on tiny, seemingly insignificant details from the studio in her drawing and how the large, loose style of Geoff’s painting of CAC staff’s precious objects seemed perversely to make them more intimate, more precious thanks to the change in scale.
I can’t for the life of me remember who said it, but I once read a comment from a painter (or maybe it was a painting critic) who wondered “What is lost in the distance granted by perspective?”… how refreshing to look at things from a different angle; to shrink and grow, Alice-like, as the situation demands; to walk tall whilst remembering we’re small…
