“Gardens have always attracted me because they are great artificial projects. Decorations, gazebos, rose beds, hedges and greenhouses never change. Greenhouses especially are a sort of sacred place…” – Artist Flavio Favelli
These last couple of weeks have been all about glass. Bubbles and glass. I’ve had a show at UCL, London (www.pattern-completion.net) so haven’t had so much time to spend on my Garden project. But I’m happy to be back in my workroom today, with plenty of reading, writing, scanning, thinking and projecting to do.
I went to the BFI on Wednesday to watch František Vláčil’s short film Glass Skies. I discovered Vláčil’s work only recently, but was struck by his poetic approach to filmmaking. This piece tells the story of a boy’s fascination with the sky. We see him playing in his grandfather’s greenhouse, a model bird he sends soaring over the glass roofs breaking one of the panes. The boy runs away from the garden, to discover an airplane parked in a nearby field. He climbs into the cockpit and imagines taking off. Throughout the film, characters and objects are viewed through panes of glass, as reflections in mirrors or distortions in shiny aircraft-parts. Obscured-glass panels of the greenhouse transform figures into abstract blocks of colour; raindrops falling onto clear glass panes blot out the scene beyond; pools of water in the garden create rippling images and reflections.
On one level a poetic reverie on flight and light, the film has ominous overtones – the story implies a plane crash involving the boy’s father. The microcosm of the greenhouse, presented as an unreal place of mirage and magic, echoes the dangers of the outside/real world beyond.
Again, I’m reminded of the idea of the garden as a microcosm; and of the relationship between gardens, childhood and play.
