I was asked a few days ago by a colleague as to what time I would be setting up. That is - they would come along with a video camera, and film me putting one of these bird boxes together. Out of comradeship, I said yes, and was extremely relieved when they ran late and I had already assembled everything, and out of politeness, I had waited there.
It's an act of intimacy to undress in front of someone, and just as much, I think, to get dressed - wandering around, trying to look in some way elegant as the clothes go back on in reverse order. It can be tricky to appear graceful about it, and applying make-up is the one thing I think blows away any illusions: the finding of the loss of face (think Dangerous Liasons, as Glenn Close wipes her face away)... It's an area of fascination for some, but not for me - and many a painter has approached the subject of a lady at her toilette, and the viewer of the painting - the intention of the artist, it's a subject in itself.
It's been far tougher than I had anticipated. The conditions for food in that perspex box are harsh - overheating from the midday sun; no air circulation, condensation, discolouration; sugar-based food melting and becoming soft very rapidly. That's what happened with Old Mother Hubbard: it literally couldn't hold itself up. Of course, there's always the onlooker - and he shouted -"it's falling, it's fallling, it's GONE" as the just-assembled birdbox fell apart, off the plinth, and all over the floor. Straight face, pragmatism and give it another go, but after two and a half hours of struggling to get the gingerbread to stay where I wanted it to, I gave up, chucked the lot in the bin, put up a sign, and went home to start again. Insult to injury, I had to pay for three hours parking instead of the 15 minutes I had blissfully visualised.
Food doesn't travel well unless it's airplane food or canapes, and frankly, as much as I would like to work in the privacy of my own home, it's not possible. Customers at the Cafe Society are polite and only stare occasionally, and wonder what I do. if they make eye contact, and look at me quizzically, I'll stop and explain, and the moment of revelation, as they understand what they are looking at, dawns, and then a smile. That's the moment for me - when someone pauses and takes it in, and understands, rather than the whisking away of the cloth or the flinging open of doors to the Salon. Watching me get it together is that less graceful moment that will always be private for me, and to take it away - well....
"Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder."
Advent, 1938, Patrick Kavanagh (1904 - 1967), born in County Monaghan and lived there as a farmer, a cobbler and a poet until he moved to Dublin in 1939.
It's an act of intimacy to undress in front of someone, and just as much, I think, to get dressed - wandering around, trying to look in some way elegant as the clothes go back on in reverse order. It can be tricky to appear graceful about it, and applying make-up is the one thing I think blows away any illusions: the finding of the loss of face (think Dangerous Liasons, as Glenn Close wipes her face away)... It's an area of fascination for some, but not for me - and many a painter has approached the subject of a lady at her toilette, and the viewer of the painting - the intention of the artist, it's a subject in itself.
It's been far tougher than I had anticipated. The conditions for food in that perspex box are harsh - overheating from the midday sun; no air circulation, condensation, discolouration; sugar-based food melting and becoming soft very rapidly. That's what happened with Old Mother Hubbard: it literally couldn't hold itself up. Of course, there's always the onlooker - and he shouted -"it's falling, it's fallling, it's GONE" as the just-assembled birdbox fell apart, off the plinth, and all over the floor. Straight face, pragmatism and give it another go, but after two and a half hours of struggling to get the gingerbread to stay where I wanted it to, I gave up, chucked the lot in the bin, put up a sign, and went home to start again. Insult to injury, I had to pay for three hours parking instead of the 15 minutes I had blissfully visualised.
Food doesn't travel well unless it's airplane food or canapes, and frankly, as much as I would like to work in the privacy of my own home, it's not possible. Customers at the Cafe Society are polite and only stare occasionally, and wonder what I do. if they make eye contact, and look at me quizzically, I'll stop and explain, and the moment of revelation, as they understand what they are looking at, dawns, and then a smile. That's the moment for me - when someone pauses and takes it in, and understands, rather than the whisking away of the cloth or the flinging open of doors to the Salon. Watching me get it together is that less graceful moment that will always be private for me, and to take it away - well....
"Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder."
Advent, 1938, Patrick Kavanagh (1904 - 1967), born in County Monaghan and lived there as a farmer, a cobbler and a poet until he moved to Dublin in 1939.
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