PUDDLE IN MIND

 

On my way back from the dentist. I need to sort my teeth out after decades of neglect: at least salvage a bit of dignity, give a semi-respectable impression in photos. 👀

Anyway, on the way back I noticed some slightly different angles on my local church and the adjacent school. In some ways this was a high point of English confidence and cultural projection. We can come at it with a moralistic attitude as if we would have been so much better if we had been around a century ago or so ago. And yes, the happenstance of history played a massive role. It's no credit to me. I just happen to have been born on these islands in 1951,when things were starting to unravel, though we didn't realise it at the time.

It's not "great" Architecture, but it's competent, coherent, & versatile urban design by an emerging profession with an impressive command of scale and detail. It connects seamlessly with the past and adapts well to New functions and rapid growth.

I'm sorry, but the developers, local government and professions of my lifetime cannot claim to have maintained that standard. There have been flashes of brilliance, yes. But overall a mish-mash of either trying too hard to "innovate" or just going through the motions, building to a budget.

At least we have these reminders of what we could be.

 

This is part of the front boundary of the block of retirement flats where I now live. Lots to see. Moss and lichen which connect to my renewed interest in plant taxonomy and evolution. Lichen is a symbiont, not a plant, but still connected to the evolutionary story of early plants and their cyanobacteria precursor.

Brick on edge coping, holding up better than some of the stretchers below. Could indicate careful selection of bricks to use on the coping?

At the bottom, a course of headers. Kind of makes sense. Maybe English Bond was used for all the below-ground work. But how to incorporate the weep-holes? The way it's done here just throws the bonding out and leads to straight joints. Not a train smash, and I can't think of a better solution offhand 🤔

The main body is Flemish Garden Wall. Which looks good, provides enough headers to tie the two leaves together, and is easier to handle than Flemish itself. The main point of Garden Wall bonds is to allow a fair face on both sides. Or something close.

 

 

Almost 50 years ago my dad gave me a framed picture to hang up in the run down terraced house in Sheffield he had lent me money to buy. It put my foot on the first rung of the property ladder, and although I didn't climb to any great height, owning my own home all these years has had a huge impact. Altogether I've owned seven different homes, switching up and down according to my circumstances, but mostly quite modest.

I wish I was able to tell my dad now how much that picture means to me. It's one of Escher's more subtle works. At the time I'm afraid I may have betrayed my disappointment at not getting a reproduction of one of his more mind-bending compositions. But this simple portrait of a puddle says so much about the nature of perception and the problem of making marks on a flat surface to convey that subtle inner world of eye and brain.

 

What is real? The wheels and shoes that passed by? The sky and trees reflected in the water? The flat surface of the water itself, or the gooey texture of the mud? Or is it the paper, the ink, the wood block meticulously carved by Escher, the master of print technique?

The art work speaks of memory traces and the elusive reality beyond them. The images here speak of my memories. A wall in Zimbabwe, of a house I used to own. All the pictures on it lost in various ways but their complex meanings still alive in me. A still life painted by my dad. Degas ballet dancers. We both loved those.

 

Then there's the puddle in the park after the first decent rain for a couple of months. I let AI turn it into an oil painting to emphasise the plane of the image. It's not a patch on Escher of course, but at least I had a go. Maybe I will find a way of doing a real painting, inspired by Escher but my own take. That's a big ask.