I’m not going to be able to cover much for Chris while he’s out in the desert breaking in his new boots, because I’m chin-deep in homework, but this is too good not to share.
Making Light’s Jim MacDonald has a wonderful post up about these railroad models. Really, maybe railroad models aren’t your thing, but go take a look anyway, and don’t miss Jim’s post either. He has some remarkable things to say about the artist’s eye and about what goes into showing the world what you’ve seen. And this comment blew me away.
The world of the small has always drawn me. When I was a child, I wanted dollhouses (but never dolls). I loved making dioramas in grade school-do kids still do that? The Field Museum in Chicago has a delightful series of dioramas that follow the adventures of a deceased Egyptian lady through the ancient mortuary rituals. It charms me utterly-the pair of dogs tug-o’-warring the intestines in the corner, the sunny courtyard with its sparkling piles of natron, the lady weighed against the feather of truth, with the snarling beast waiting to eat her heavy heart.
The two years I attended jewelry school in Paris, Texas, I learned a number of things: how to order a margarita (on the rocks, double shot, no salt); how to roll a joint; the word ‘whompy-jawed,’ which I will treasure forever; to say y’all, because having a plural ‘you’ that’s distinct from a singular ‘you’ just makes sense; that too much hairspray damages brains as well as the ozone layer; and how to enter that world. I spent most of those two years in an altered state, and much of the time it was caused by seeing at 10X magnification, through my Optivisor lens (I never combined the altered states-intoxicants don’t mix so well with bottled gases.) My world was about a foot square-my bench pin, my hands, my tools, my torch, and whatever bit of jewelers’ bronze I was working on at the moment. Soldering was a revelation of beauty. Bronze turns the most gorgeous cherry red before it begins to melt. I could get lost in that color, sweeping the flame back and forth to see it race in waves across the metal. The solder flows in a bright silver line, marrying two separate pieces molecularly. The flame is a live thing, hissing and sparking when you starve it, gently purring when the mix is right. I touched that flame once, when my hand drifted out of my attention while I was arranging the various tweezers and weights I used to hold the parts in place. It felt cold, just that first instant, my nerves temporarily confused by the intensity of oncoming sensation. After that, well, it took a half hour of cold running water, a cup of cafeteria ice, and 2 Tylenol 3’s (bless my roommate’s hair-sprayed head).
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