“Monday, July 2, 2007, Glasgow, Scotland: [After class] we all go down to The
Lighthouse, also known as Scotland's Centre for Design and Industry. It's a very impressive C. R. Mackintosh-designed building. It’s a bit between exhibits, but our excursion still turned out really well.
“We start
out with a climb up a very high spiral staircase to the roof, with a featured
view. That’s not exactly what Glasgow’s
good at, but the way up was cool. Sarah
really liked it. We look at stuff. On the third floor they have a superb thing. They’ve got tons of plasticine out for people
to shape and fashion into whatever they want. Spence jumps right in, and Sarah jumps in right after. Drew, who has always backed into things,
backs into it. I am a bit stumped. I need help!
‘Sarah, I don’t remember
how to do stuff like this. I don’t even
know where to start.’ She looks at me,
in a way I’m not quite sure how to interpret. ‘Just do it,' she says, and turns back to her work.
“Well. I try a landscape, actually, with frames, and
an escarpment there in the front, and two trees and three bushes, and a sloping
horizon in the background. Spence does
Moomintroll. It is agonizing for him to
leave his work in the room, where all the other participants have left their
work, and which is after all the whole, cool point of the thing. Drew’s work is entitled ‘My abstract
excursion.’ It looks kind of like a gang
of violent pretzels exploding out of a wooden crate. It’s quite good, and witty. She
puts it way in the back, behind everything.
“Sarah has
an artist’s sensibility, and an artist’s facility. She has been a bit distant, occasionally even
forbidding during our stay so far, but now she leans in with interest, even
friendly pleasure, and she works. She makes
a stylized, faceless, featureless, long-limbed eastern European man, sitting
pacifically on a stool. She calls it ‘anonymous.’It’s kind of chilling
actually. After finishing her work Sarah looks happy.
“We go to
the gift shop too, and have a really good time. The girls spend a good deal of time looking at design and furniture
books. I notice, or fancy, that the kids
are thinking of possible, or rather of impossible purchases in the light of the
things that we’ve seen, and the principles that we're trying to whisper into their
ears when we do things like this. Drew has us come and look at a flip book
that features a Russian dancer turning in circles with his leg stretched high
up and out, and a child who tries to slip by and gets kicked in the head and
completely wiped out as he does so. We
laugh. We also, finally, spend too much
money on a delightfully designed plush toy for the dear Claire. It's her birthday this week, and we'll miss it! We'll miss her, too, a lot. (We already do!) Actually, as far ast that money goes, days will pass, we’ll easily make our
budget, and we’ll be glad we spent it.
“We go
home, happy.”
Here's a picture of the aforementioned plush toy, which is currently being exhibited in the Bishop's office of the LDS Kolob 2nd ward, located at 840 South, 400 East, Springville, Utah, USA.
Everyone, it's Dave! |