Reflections on the AboutFace Launch

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Today’s blog is by the artist Clare Whistler, who has written – aptly enough – some reflections of the AboutFace launch event, held on 25 October, 2019. Clare was our greeter, our leave-taker, holding a mirror up to participants, and to the social meaning of the face. We thank Clare for framing the event – and the face – so thoughtfully. 

ABOUT FACE

face/change

Fairytales

Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Snow Queen

The start of that is the mirror

Ice

A mirror that reflects back?

What’s in it, what do we want to see

The mirror shatters and shards go into everyone’s heart or eyes or

Good and evil

Like ice

‘Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.’ Audre Lord poet 1982

To ask the questions about that face

Is it questionable, will it stay solid or melt

The face only becomes the face through expression

The humanity of the person

The Greetings 

October 25th

The cold began to seep in, the rain was endless

Everyone had the weatherwear

The rain was relentless

The sky brightened and darkened, red leaves shook

The glass bowl of ice filled with raindrops melting and raining at the same time

Light striking, circles out reeling from each drop

An evolving piece watermaking and losing in a perfect swirl

‘Framing your face

The face you were born with

The face that emerges

A face to receive or give

Face the threshold’

My word glasses float on the mirror over the lenses that look like planets

When we look in when we leave reflections are covered obscured when we started now a glow of pieces of light word

What does your face say now

What can you not see with your face

As if pieces of ice from the dropped mirror

The maybe seven years of a broken mirror

Broken again, it stated broken maybe it cancels itself out?

The shards of questions

Framing the event

I welcome and say goodbye

Do people even notice the frame

The thresholding

The beginnings

The reflections on entry entering

The reflection refracted on leaving

The infiltration of cold and wet and curiosity

The experts

All humanised

Emotional with deep practice

I am the beginner

The responder

The giver of thresholds

The welcome the parting

-the imagined shattered ice-

The fairytale misted

The ice melt magic

Eye souls

Its all about movement

Its all about exchange

With face

Can we examine face to deepen visage

The empty ice bowl will enter the water from the bridge

A fitting end, water to water

A pebble, a drop, a stone, a tear, a lump,

A fortune teller

Everyone loves a gift

A memory

Something to treasure

I forgot to use the bell

There was no time

I just managed to greet the first guest with ice bowl in place

Diamond drops in it like jewel raindrops

The carve marks on the ice sculpture raised edges

With the rain and the melting it got smaller and smaller

It got smoother and smoother

Clear and clearer

Who noticed it I don’t know

Who understood it I don’t know

Was it needed I don’t know

Less seen in the rain

But I was the threshold for most people

Some did not want to look in the mirror at themselves

Some who humourlessly dismissed themselves or raised the signs of ageing as critical or humorous

Some who could not see through the rain and fogged glasses

The responses to asking

Would you or could you receive or give your face

Most older said no

Some very thoughtful said they had thought about it

Some were considering the question and it was why they were here

The only people I did not question was the team-

A real oversight

Not sure its worth it now

They were not personally greeted or welcomed everyone else was

With surprise, delight, questioning, a bit of startlement, annoyance, weather issues

Only one person walked through me as if I wasn’t there

In haste, unseeing, determined

The only ones who said yes to giving or receiving a face were young

Rain

Ice sculpture

Balanced on edge

Luminous glow

Covering the grey

Heavy as lead

Muted reflection

Strange melt

Bathed in rain

Feet in blue gauze slippers

The attire of hospitals

Long blue dress

The waterline

Travelling up from the ground

Authentic look of long skirts

In weather

On the stone threshold

Great wood door ajar

Gloved in blue

Holding the radar mess dish

Satellite, operating room, planet mirror, circling centre lens, lights below it

distressed, torn, damaged surface

Leaving enough to see one’s face

As people came down the hill to approach

I lifted the mirror toward them in front of my face from behind I said

Framing the face

Then lowered it so they had to look down into it

Said the words…

Got their responses

Some literal and welcomed them

‘facing the threshold’

The start of the project

Each an intimate moment

With a greeter who questioned

On leaving

Holding the mirror filled with glass drops with face words written on them the drops obscured the mirror

Do you have more curiosity than when you arrived

Everyone said yes

They left with more questions

more things to contemplate, to consider

Their own faces now obscured when looking into the mirror

Mirror mirror on the wall

Who is the fairest of them all

Our faces now obscured we were gifted a raindrop

 a shard of mirror, a word or two something to remember being there

Framing the greeting and parting

A subtle frame of greeting and parting

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