More Art!

Back at the end of July, when we were all young and hopeful, Alchemy held its Art Fundraiser. My own GALAXY Project was there — and was funded! — along with about twenty other works. Now, of course, Alchemy has been canceled. (We continue to work on GALAXY with the hopes we can debut it at Unsilent Night Newnan in December.)

Part of the fundraiser is an auction of donated pieces by our artists, and I was particularly interested in one of the pieces donated by Christina Dean Cureton, the creator of Pocket Dimensions Waystation, which is displayed at the burn two or three camps down the road from my camp.

Pocket Dimensions are intricate, intriguing little dioramas. Think of those sucky little book report projects you or your child did back in the day (or maybe by tomorrow morning if that’s where you are in life), but GENIUS. The gifted kid’s project, as it were.

Have a gallery:

Here’s Tina (as she is known) in an interview from the burn newsletter, the Alchemist, July 2020, explaining where she got the idea for these little universes:

Oh I love telling this story. I’ve been asked this question a million times! Now, my 8-year-old...for some reason, LOVES theoretical quantum physics. Like, LOVES. I can provide a picture of his most recent birthday cake for proof if wanted. :P He says he’s torn between being an engineer, or a physicist when he gets older, because he both wants to discover things, AND make/invent them.

So that’s the backstory. I, having degrees in social sciences and being an artist, have very little ability to truly really get into deep-dive discussions with him about this stuff. But I try. I read things, I watch the videos he brings me, etc. One day he wanted to discuss how things at higher dimensional planes could be compressed so that something very large, like an entire universe, could fit into something very, very small. So naturally, I tell him about Men In Black (the movie), about how an entire galaxy is in a marble, and that final scene, where our entire universe is inside a mail locker in another universe. He of course, goes wild, then brings me some of my scale models (I’ve been doing scale models, doll houses, etc for about a decade at this point). He tells me, “Mommy! You could totally do an art project where you make little worlds with your models inside of boxes that people could look inside!” And I was stunned and said, “Oh my God, I CAN”. He gets so excited when I tell him that I tell people that was my inspiration for it. But it’s 100% true— it was his idea, and I just ran with it.

At the Fundraiser auction, Tina had two little lightbox pieces, carefully layered vistas that light up with strands of programmable LEDs. One of them I really wanted, and I was prepared to outbid anyone else at the auction.

Alas, I was staffing my own project and missed the beginning of the auction, and the piece I wanted was the first up. It went for a respectable price, but I was willing to have paid twice what it went for. Grrr.

Not a problem. Tina, who was next to GALAXY with her Pocket Waystation project, offered to make me one. WooT! She offered several designs , I picked two, haggled over prices (I wanted to pay her more), and they arrived last week.

The first is called ‘Tree of Life.’

The second is ‘New Moon.’

There is a backstory to ‘New Moon’:

Tina says: The narrative is "New Moon" because I was in my head about Princess Mononoke, and how she lives with giant wolves. In this story, the humans and the wolf don't fight over the cave — the humans sleep in it at night while the wolves hunt, and protect the cave, leaving the young and the old nearby it, and when the sun rises, the wolves howl to let the humans know the "new moon" has risen, and the humans rise to the surface, using mirrors and the tips of their spears to send light all the way to the bottom (think ancient Sumerian methods), and the fire is lit so the humans can make way for the wolves, who then take over the cave during the day, with the humans topside, leaving their old and young near the entrance, so nothing can approach the cave while the wolves sleep. When the moon rises, the humans howl, as the wolves do, to let the wolves know the moon has risen.

It’s hard to tell with the lighting, but both pieces are beautifully done even when the lights are off. But with the lights on — wow!

Here’s a video of the two pieces in action:

There you have it, two new pieces added to the Lyles Collection. That brings the number of artworks that I have not found an actual display space for to four. Don’t worry, Christina, you’re in good company: the Picasso doesn’t have a spot either.

NOTE: Christina is working on a website to display/sell her work. I’ll post it here when she gets around to it. In the meantime, if you were interested in commissioning something from her, email her.