Urban Distopia

Percolating away in my brain for some years has been a difficulty in finding a way of representing the destruction and violence at national levels.  At each stage something prevented me from continuing with any of the ideas.

Now after a visit to a conference, where there was some discussion about both techniques and expression, a new vein of thought and its possible expression began.  This is the first iteration of that thread of thought.  

Urban distopia is about the things that go wrong even when we - either as individuals or as a society - try to do the right things.  This first expression of the idea is based on the destruction being felt throughout the middle east.

Destruction (Urban Distopia 1)

The mirror is an attempt to reflect our responsibility for these things.  We are not just observers.  When we look at the destruction, we are reflected in it.  

Placed on a plinth at approximately eye level, the viewer is reflected amongst the destruction.

More Restorations

A delight for me at the moment is the start of a small restoration of some stair windows in a William Leiper designed house.  These windows are fixed directly into the stone above a sloping roof.  The owner took advantage of the erection of scaffolding to repair the roof to have me come to restore broken pieces of glass and to try to eliminate the amount of water coming into the house from the windows.

Taking glass out of stone is always difficult without breaking the edge pieces of glass, hence the tradition of one or two lines of narrow glass around the perimeter of the window, as these can be replaced without affecting the whole of the window. With the help of a friend and one of his tools, we managed to get the windows out without a great deal of breakage.

A more local appreciation of William Lieper