in the beginning, there was a clementine...

The object that I chose to work with in class on Thursday was a clementine I bought in the big indoor market. It was slightly bruised, and I ripped off part of the skin to reveal the inside and make a more interesting surface. From mind-mapping, I settled on these two concepts: branches/veins and the idea of frames or doorways and what they contain or lead to.

Inside the clementine, I found white fibers that spread across the surface like veins. When I went to Volterra this weekend, I saw this vein-like pattern in tree branches, bark, and cracks in the walls.

Volterra was also full of small doorways and nooks that related to my second concept. I was thinking that a door is a barrier that can be opened, like the skin of a clementine. This barrier/portal represents a possible decision...do I really want to eat this clementine? (the answer to which is always yes!) Do I really want to open this door and go inside? This small decision confronts us everyday as we choose to go inside certain stores. This small decision determines who we interact with and what we confront.

I also thought about the idea of the church as a doorway into heaven. The architecture of the churches we've visited, and the artworks in them, increase their sense of importance. Their doors are larger and more ornate. We react to different doors in different ways.

In the gallery we went to on Tuesday night, there was a work that had two fans that flipped the pages of an old book. It seemed to me that the fans were opening a kind of door into the past, and I thought about how the cover of a book is a door to the contents within.

In contrast, there were nooks in the walls in Volterra that lacked doors. These spaces are completely public, and yet because they seem to have no use anymore, they are ignored (except when used to get rid of trash). I also loved finding doorways/windows that have since been filled up.

- Grace