This summer I’ve been thinking a lot about liminal spaces. The between spaces, the ones that you have to occupy or pass through to get from one place to another. They can be temporal like twilight between night and day, or physical like a train station, or a forest. They’re charged with potential. The veil between worlds is thin in these spaces, and one shouldn’t tarry for too long.
My studio was originally a prairie schoolhouse. In 1947 it was moved to town and used as a church. After that, a community building, and then for storage, before I came into its possession. The front entryway has a foyer before you enter the main building. Originally this room had practical uses, like a place to hang coats and to greet. But these kinds of spaces have other purposes. They’re transitional spaces from the outer world into an inner one. For learning or for worshipping, one has to be in the right state of mind, reminded that what they are participating in is elevated from the mundane world that’s left outside.
Walking through the front door.
The foyer has been a storage area for years. This summer I decided that it needed to embrace its true calling, being a portal between the outside world and the inner world of my creative space. It needed to produce a sense of awe, or at least slight discomfort. I created a scene of twilight during an eclipse, with the eclipsed sun and a few nocturnal native moths. Deep blues and indigos. A strand of stars blinking on the ceiling. I added a bookcase for my collection of unusual old books (which aren’t necessarily there to be read, but their presence adds weight).
At this point I was satisfied. But then I realized that this was a perfect gallery for my artwork that deals with liminal spaces. The betweens, the shadows. So I added a few paintings and sculptures. I had a few extra old chairs that needed a home, and they serendipitously became conceptual art pieces. It feels complete now.
Two red childrens’ chairs have been gathering dust in a corner for years. Recently I set them in the foyer to get them out of my way. A few days later, as I was walking through, I realized that it feels like a waiting room. And now it is. The chairs are for dualistic thinking. Black and white, right and wrong. When I go into the studio I want to leave those behind. Dualism now has a place to sit and wait outside so it doesn’t interfere with my creative process.
Up until recently, I didn’t have a good place for an old school desk. I set it in the foyer. That same day I found a bird’s nest, and set it on the chair. Inspired, I got out a few small skulls and set them in the nest, not quite sure why but just following my intuition. Standing back, I realized that I had just made my first conceptual art piece, and it makes a very strong statement. It represents my experience with the education system, which sucked my soul out and left me scarred. A sensitive little girl was made to sit quietly and obediently at a school desk for over 12 years, taught that the way she understood and perceived the world was wrong, and that she was flawed. Her wild and curious and authentic self atrophied until all that was left were bones. The nest is an obvious metaphor for a formative space for youth and innocence, and the skulls are my spirit.
It’s taken decades to undo what was done. And now, this stays here in the linear outside world of ‘shoulds’ and ‘have-to’s’. Within, I’m allowed to be as wild and creative and authentic as I want to be. Inside the studio, there are no limitations.