Sunday, May 18, 2008

I think all (or perhaps most) of these photos are from Westminster Cathedral in London. There's so much beauty in the architecture, the tile, the paintings, the statues, but what captured my interest the most I think were the many beautiful surfaces of cut marble on columns, walls, panels, and floors.



Some, like this piece, were obviously cut open and placed carefully as mirror images.



Other places a series of similar but unique pieces were inlaid.



Here's another piece matching the ones above from a balastrude on the opposite side of a small set of stairs near the front of the altar.



This one reminded me of photos I'd taken of roots working their way down and through boulders and cliff walls. In fact, many of the the pieces mimicked other natural patterns.



Another set of mirror images, this one a bit dark but I didn't want to use a flash in the sanctity of the church. Sections such as this seemed more mythological than natural - I expected faces or movements to suddenly appear within them.



Another one that could be roots, or perhaps studier branches, or maybe cobwebs.



This one was more fractured and edgy than many of the other pieces, less soothing. Yet later, flying high above the arctic ice flows, I saw similar patterns across miles of earth.



This last one, that holds a quiet heart, was my favorite.

Don't these images call for artistic recreation? What medium would you want to use to interpret them in? Paint? Pastel? Fabric? Clay?

1 comment:

Miss*Laurence said...

I love this unusual take on a very famous monument, some of these are a bit spooky ( like the dark green one), but like you I am amazed that they used the mirror images, I would never have expected it.

I've spent many hours drawing veins in rocks and stones. In the end I was struck by the many similarities in nature: these veins could well be roots, or the meandres of a river seen from the sky, or the veins on a leaf, or in our own bodies it's all like fractals... everything and everybody connected.