bird, box & spindle
LEscalier unique, 1995
Painting/Collage (24"x 36")
Collection of the Nova Scotia Art Bank
© Julie Lapalme
nest
A liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome you and closes to defend you; it is an architecture without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where it needs to be and what it needs to be.
— Marcos Novak, TransTerraFirma: After Territory
The nest in the staircase becomes a symbol of that first childhood
home; it is composed of bits of memory and associations, held
together with string, which winds and courses through all those
early experiences. The dream-house is fluid, creating rooms as
you move through them; their plan informed by memories of houses
you have been in before. Yet the dream does not follow a set blueprint:
it is blue like water, a layered nest.
It creates an idea of the house, a memory-collage of different
houses; its layout may contain a secret doorway or staircase leading
to a room which had not previously existed in real
space. In the dream, the familiar landscape of the interior becomes
a strange terrain that can be mapped and explored. The self is
similarly divided and re-invented in dreams.
Family Tree l Pigeon:
Cowardice l Cuckoo: Courage l Mme. Cowbird l L'Escalier Unique
Winding Staircase l House
of my Own l L'Escalier qui monte