We Choose a Wall

After exploring the house, with all its nooks and crannies, we chose a wall in the large room upstairs (the "Conference Room)--a room that had once served as a shelter for runaway teenage girls.

The wall is situated between two large windows, where the light floods in. Unlike many of the walls that have been painted or plastered over, it retains the patina of the multiple layers of use. Remnants of murals, from its day as an aristocratic family residence. Plaster and white paint, from its days as a school. Layers of flaking colors. Walls that crumble to the touch, hinting at what is buried beneath. Even the floor is textured, with bits of concrete hinting at the wheelchairs that used to roam down the halls when it was a center for disabled children.

As always, I am drawn to that sense of embodied history: at how what passes through a room leaves an echo. The textured walls feel alive, like an aging body that bears upon it the evidence of the life it has born. The stretch marks and scars. I want to work with the patterns on the wall, rather than impose upon them.

‘If you look upon an old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, uncommon attitudes, humorous faces, draperies, etc. Out of this confused mass of objects, the mind will be furnished with an abundance of designs and subjects perfectly new’ writes Leonardo in his diaries. The walls of this house team with discovery.

I know I will use the colors already found in the tiles and historic wall paintings: the ochers, reds and blues. The aqua of the shutters.

The images will take into account the ghosts in these walls: the Saraphin family, the children in the schools, the runaway girls who found shelter in this beautiful airy room, the disabled children who made a home here.

I am beginning to sketch at home, to have an idea of what kind of images we may include in the mural. But I know it all will change when I stand in front of the wall, and work with what I find, already there.