STEFANIA FERRARIO MODELS TIME AERIALS. Photo by Jessica Eisener.
STEFANIA FERRARIO MODELS YESTERDAY MAKERS:
Waiting for yesterday's bus. Time-troubled timetables and the perils of time machines. Photo by Jessica Eisener.
ABOVE: illustrating the gut-wrenching, sinking feeling of missing a bus or train. In this case, time is playing tricks and catching the bus is far harder than you can possibly imagine. It's like waiting for a train on a long-abandoned platform, bowel-stirring and full of nostalgia and loss.
STEFANIA FERRARIO MODELS TIME AERIALS. Photo by Jessica Eisener.
ABINGTON AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. A very early drawing that gets a mention in Yesterday Makers.
This is the passage from YESTERDAY MAKERS:
"I looked at the church, and I concentrated very hard, because the brain always plays tricks and fills in details that might not be there. I counted the individual courses for the height of an arched window. Valuable time, I admit, but time well spent. There was no skimping in the rendering, no artistic suggestion—the building was carefully drawn, not lightly sketched. Every stone and brick was there. This place was real."
I've underlined the relevant bits. The idea was that the 10-year-old me felt compelled to draw every brick. More mature artists tend to simplify and suggest such things. But the test of reality (as compared to a dream or art) is the depth of detail. So here was a case of my nostalgia for the old me playing out through a picture I created at the time. (I lived in the house opposite and drew the picture looking through the front room window.) I drew every brick then, and later, travelling back in time, I counted every brick in the real church.
"I looked at the church, and I concentrated very hard, because the brain always plays tricks and fills in details that might not be there. I counted the individual courses for the height of an arched window. Valuable time, I admit, but time well spent. There was no skimping in the rendering, no artistic suggestion—the building was carefully drawn, not lightly sketched. Every stone and brick was there. This place was real."
I've underlined the relevant bits. The idea was that the 10-year-old me felt compelled to draw every brick. More mature artists tend to simplify and suggest such things. But the test of reality (as compared to a dream or art) is the depth of detail. So here was a case of my nostalgia for the old me playing out through a picture I created at the time. (I lived in the house opposite and drew the picture looking through the front room window.) I drew every brick then, and later, travelling back in time, I counted every brick in the real church.