Dream House Part V: Outer Space, Andrea Dezsö, and "Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly"

"The imaginary lunar landscapes reference the Apollo 13 expedition, which never actually made a landing on the Moon.  'Houston we have a problem' was uttered during the mission and continues to be a magically compelling turn of phrase.  What captured my imagination is how not being able to go somewhere physically opens the possibility of epic mental Odysseys, and how we can stuff empty space full with rich imaginary worlds, then move in."

     ---Andrea Dezsö (b. 1968), "Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly," Exhibition Pamphlet, Rice Gallery (2010)

In "Sometimes in My Dreams I Fly" now on exhibition at Rice Gallery in Houston, Romanian-born artist Andrea Dezsö creates an enchanting dream world inspired by space travel.  As Dezsö explains, as a child growing up in Communist Romania without a passport, travel was an impossibility. The space missions of the 1960s and 1970s offered her the vicarious pleasure of the odyssey, catalyzing her artistic vision of a whimsical other-world, untethered by the limitations of reality.  

Known for her "tunnel books,"  Dezsö translates this smaller scale media form into the larger space of Rice gallery.  Through small and odd-shaped windows placed at different heights, we gaze into multi-layered laser-cut tunnels up to six feet in length extending back into the gallery space.  Against the softly glowing cerulean and sea-green landscape, we see the silhouettes of those who populate this space---mythical figures that intermingle the features of humans, insects, and plant-life. Dancing on the edges of these tunnels, the joyous poses of Dezso's surreal characters welcome us and make these vistas seem less remote and less austere than most depictions of outer space. 

Along these lines, I am most taken with Dezsö's characterization of her work as a domestic endeavor.  Perhaps the allure of this space is not visitability but inhabitability--the desire to "move in" as she expresses it.  Dezsö, while new to this art form, thus grasps the inherent play between interiority and exteriority that large scale installation invites.  The mind's eye creates both voyage and destination, but the medium of art turns this imaginative world into a physical reality.  Much as Dezsö longed to travel, we desire to cross the glass window of the gallery to occupy this world. Yet although this is an impossibility, her exhibit also reminds us of the possibilities for creating the worlds that we wish to inhabit.  Dream houses are precisely that--the architecture of the imagination.

On exhibit at Rice Gallery April 8th through August 8th. 

Dream House Part III: Cliff-Dwellings

"The moon was up, though the sun hadn't set, and it had that glittering silveriness the early stars have in high altitudes.  The heavenly bodies look so much more remote from the bottom of a deep canyon than they do from the level.  The climb of the walls helps out the eye, somehow.  I lay down on a solitary rock that was like an island in the bottom of the valley, and looked up.  The grey sage-brush and the blue-grey rock around me were already in shadow, but high above me the canyon walls were dyed flame-colour with the sunset, and the Cliff City lay in a gold haze against its dark cavern.  In a few minutes it, too, was grey, and only the rim rock at the top held the red light.  When that was gone, I could still see the copper glow in the pinons along the edge of the top ledges.  The arc of sky over the canyon was silvery blue, with its pale yellow moon, and presently stars shivered into it, like crystals dropped into perfectly clear water."

---Willa Cather, The Professor's House (1925)

In this scene from Cather's novel of modern life, The Professor's House (1925), the orphaned cowhand, Tom, describes the enchanting cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde.  Once inhabited by the Anasazi Indians, these dwellings have remained untouched for centuries, preserved as if in "amber" by the sun and the dry climate.   In Tom's account, he narrates his discovery of the dwellings and the amateurish archaeological project that he, his friend Roddy, and their housekeeper, Henry, pursue in the hope that the Smithsonian will take an interest in their findings.   When Tom returns to the Mesa following an unsuccessful trip to Washington, he discovers that Roddy has sold the artifacts to a German trader. After a bitter feud, Tom evicts Roddy and remains on the mesa for a solitary summer.  

This particular scene follows the loss of the men's friendship, their idealized family housekeeping-museum project, and the loss of the relics.  Tom's description of these homes from a position below  is one of the most vivid passages within the novel, and its detail and splendor suggests an oneiric home.  The dismantling of the idealized or utopian home is a modern conceit for Cather, and this story is set within a longer story about (in the simplest sense) the loss of cultural meaning in the 1920s.  Yet the intensity and purity of Tom's final experience on the mesa resonates with our very contemporary longing for wholeness and well-being.  As Tom discerns, the unadulterated happiness he experiences in these final months will only be temporary.  In a similar way, while we strive for happiness (almost as if it were a state that could be attained or sustained for any length of time) such moments are likely to be unpredictable and fleeting--something we grasp from a distance, in a flash of quickly changing color and light.

Plum Blossoms and Moonlight

Taken from the back of a box of Metropolitan Museum of Art Correspondence Cards featuring a plum blossom design modeled on a woodblock print by Suzuki Harunobu:

" One Japanese Poet said, 'On a spring night when the moon shines through a blossoming plum tree growing by the eaves, the moonbeams themselves seem filled with perfume.' "

Horoscope

The word "horoscope" derives from the French words for "hour" and "season" as well as the Greek word for "observer." To locate destiny in the alignment of celestial bodies is nonsensical and yet enticingly dramatic.


Those who favor this quote will know that it was also chosen by Lucy Maud Montgomery for her book Anne of Green Gables. 

"The good stars met in your horoscope,
     Made you of spirit and fire and dew--"

--Robert Browning (1812-1889), "Evelyn Hope"