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
