Spring 2001 Charles River Review: Constructing Escapes

We would build a tree house, a permanent post for adventures and escapades. It would replace makeshift blanket-and-chair tents, imaginary shelters in shrubbery, and dark closet hideaways. My brother and I began drafting designs, making elaborate plans for our ideal treetop abode--multiple floors, trap doors, rope bridges, hammocks high above ground. But the Swiss Family Robinson we were not. Our father soon diagnosed the backyard trees as unsound, unable to support our architectural endeavors. Introducing an alternative plan, he argued for a tree-free tree house and, though unconvinced at first, we reluctantly adopted his vision of a safe, practical single platform to be constructed between--not in--two flowering plumeria trees. Any deadlock or discord between siblings was short-lived, overruled by our father's engineering background and protective parental instincts. There was no use bickering about colors (blue versus yellow, pink versus green) because he selected a textured, slip-resistant paint (in maroon) for the floor and a clear, weatherproof stain for the rest. His cautious approach defined the project, decelerated our initial momentum, and slowed construction. My brother and I soon lost interest in the process and focused on the product. Forgetting about potential walls, roof, and trap door, we eagerly scrambled up the incomplete structure, leaving Dad below with his plans and power tools.

Despite its utilitarian design and unfinished profile, the tree house (always the tree house, even without a tree) served us well. Without a roof above, the trapezoidal floor remained exposed to the elements; its anti-slip paint faded from brick red to muted mauve. Though the color softened, the safety surface remained rough, embossing our skin with red, speckled imprints. Outfitted with umbrellas and beach-mats for protection against sun and scrapes, we climbed up the rope ladder and into other worlds. When perched on our sturdy platform, six feet high, my brother and I were much further from home than the close ground level suggested, for together with neighborhood friends we explored far-off lands, distant times, leaving Honolulu and the 1980s behind. The simple structure beamed children to medieval sieges against fortified towers, afternoon teas in English manors, and futuristic missions with Buck Rogers. Our mini-odysseys never lacked elaborate accessories--from crossbows to fine bone china, ladies-in-waiting to laser beams--thanks to the wonders of tinfoil, common household products, and make-believe. Whether representing a Welsh castle, a plush drawing room, or an intergalactic spacecraft, the half-built tree house exercised our well-developed imaginations. I still associate abrasive paint with fantasy and play.

I recently found a snapshot of two nine-year-old girls (I'm on the left) sitting up in the tree house, wearing matching sky-blue leotards and eating strawberries while smiling down at the camera. The image reminds me of picnics and giggles, of afternoons in the tree house without pretend time travel. Even when staying in Honolulu and the '80s, the structure offered a sort of escape--a safe place for secrets and crushes and quiet introspection. Of course, escapism and introspection weren't in my nine-year-old vocabulary. I just thought of it as a playhouse and hideaway. During our teenage years, when my brother and I suddenly saw the tree house as an unused six-foot platform, our father dismantled his creation. The snapshot shows the solid design, the carefully selected 4" x 4"s, the uniquely colored scratchy floor. As an adolescent, I sometimes bemoaned the absence of a tree (and roof and walls), but now I think of the strange construction as my father's creative statement--the platform, a site-specific installation; our backyard, an alternative art venue; the kids, an engaged and captivated audience. This parallelism, itself an odd assembly of idealized memories and art-school-talk, was reinforced during a recent trip to Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).

Entering the ICA this month is like encountering the tree house after major expansion work--lumber and steel, brackets and bolts, C-clamps and plywood. Elaborate scaffolding fills the central open stair, disorienting loyal ICA visitors, disrupting the neutral gallery order of white walls and modernist spaces. Gallery goers confront construction and change, but soon they recognize a new order imposed on the interior by artist Olafur Eliasson. Aligned on an axis perpendicular to the diagonal stairway, the scaffolding emerges from the bottom floor, lifting eyes to a plywood plane somewhere near the third floor ceiling. While the raw lumber and naked joints suggest a work in progress, their precision of placement and integrity of design reveal a finished product, as meticulously constructed as my father's slowly built backyard platform. Edges meet, angles match, forces and loads are balanced. Several extra steps extend the stairway, and an added handrail leads viewers through a rectangular void in the plywood, into a dark, attic-like space, formerly a traditional gallery.

Turning to face the main area, I realized the original polished floor is hidden four feet under the wooden plank platform. Then I saw the water. Still water, just inches deep, covers most of the new surface, filling a large expanse lined with black plastic. Previously unobtrusive white ceiling supports suddenly double; the I-beam trusses, now at eye-level, appear below in the water mirror. As eyes adjust to the altered environment, a subtle change in shadows announces the neonripple--nine concentric circles of light expanding rhythmically, reflecting from the ceiling's far corner, slowly drawing ripples on the water.

Eliasson's vision hovers above the routine, the familiar, despite being constructed with pedestrian supplies and practical care. Neonripple's added steps encourage a distancing from reality, an escape similar to our tree house adventures. All my favorite contemporary installations--from the oil reflections of Richard Wilson's 20:50 to the fuzz figures of Tonico Lemos Auad's Antelope Carpet--engender a wonder and a responsiveness I associate with childhood. This feeling might be a postadolescent fabrication, even a cliché, but it's real now, whether or not it was real then. On April 1, Olafur Eliasson's exhibit, titled Your only real thing is time, will make way for the next ICA exhibit, and neonripple will only exist through photographs, videos, and essays left for future interpretation. In contemporary art and childhood play, these elevated structures are not permanent constructed escapes, but the creations leave lasting impressions, ripple through time.



	THE HARVARD EXTENSION SCHOOL WRITING PROGRAM PREVIOUS \| CONTENTS \| NEXT Constructing Escapes Laurette Wilkie We would build a tree house, a permanent post for adventures and escapades. It would replace makeshift blanket-and-chair tents, imaginary shelters in shrubbery, and dark closet hideaways. My brother and I began drafting designs, making elaborate plans for our ideal treetop abode--multiple floors, trap doors, rope bridges, hammocks high above ground. But the Swiss Family Robinson we were not. Our father soon diagnosed the backyard trees as unsound, unable to support our architectural endeavors. Introducing an alternative plan, he argued for a tree-free tree house and, though unconvinced at first, we reluctantly adopted his vision of a safe, practical single platform to be constructed between--not in--two flowering plumeria trees. Any deadlock or discord between siblings was short-lived, overruled by our father's engineering background and protective parental instincts. There was no use bickering about colors (blue versus yellow, pink versus green) because he selected a textured, slip-resistant paint (in maroon) for the floor and a clear, weatherproof stain for the rest. His cautious approach defined the project, decelerated our initial momentum, and slowed construction. My brother and I soon lost interest in the process and focused on the product. Forgetting about potential walls, roof, and trap door, we eagerly scrambled up the incomplete structure, leaving Dad below with his plans and power tools. Despite its utilitarian design and unfinished profile, the tree house (always the tree house, even without a tree) served us well. Without a roof above, the trapezoidal floor remained exposed to the elements; its anti-slip paint faded from brick red to muted mauve. Though the color softened, the safety surface remained rough, embossing our skin with red, speckled imprints. Outfitted with umbrellas and beach-mats for protection against sun and scrapes, we climbed up the rope ladder and into other worlds. When perched on our sturdy platform, six feet high, my brother and I were much further from home than the close ground level suggested, for together with neighborhood friends we explored far-off lands, distant times, leaving Honolulu and the 1980s behind. The simple structure beamed children to medieval sieges against fortified towers, afternoon teas in English manors, and futuristic missions with Buck Rogers. Our mini-odysseys never lacked elaborate accessories--from crossbows to fine bone china, ladies-in-waiting to laser beams--thanks to the wonders of tinfoil, common household products, and make-believe. Whether representing a Welsh castle, a plush drawing room, or an intergalactic spacecraft, the half-built tree house exercised our well-developed imaginations. I still associate abrasive paint with fantasy and play. I recently found a snapshot of two nine-year-old girls (I'm on the left) sitting up in the tree house, wearing matching sky-blue leotards and eating strawberries while smiling down at the camera. The image reminds me of picnics and giggles, of afternoons in the tree house without pretend time travel. Even when staying in Honolulu and the '80s, the structure offered a sort of escape--a safe place for secrets and crushes and quiet introspection. Of course, escapism and introspection weren't in my nine-year-old vocabulary. I just thought of it as a playhouse and hideaway. During our teenage years, when my brother and I suddenly saw the tree house as an unused six-foot platform, our father dismantled his creation. The snapshot shows the solid design, the carefully selected 4" x 4"s, the uniquely colored scratchy floor. As an adolescent, I sometimes bemoaned the absence of a tree (and roof and walls), but now I think of the strange construction as my father's creative statement--the platform, a site-specific installation; our backyard, an alternative art venue; the kids, an engaged and captivated audience. This parallelism, itself an odd assembly of idealized memories and art-school-talk, was reinforced during a recent trip to Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). Entering the ICA this month is like encountering the tree house after major expansion work--lumber and steel, brackets and bolts, C-clamps and plywood. Elaborate scaffolding fills the central open stair, disorienting loyal ICA visitors, disrupting the neutral gallery order of white walls and modernist spaces. Gallery goers confront construction and change, but soon they recognize a new order imposed on the interior by artist Olafur Eliasson. Aligned on an axis perpendicular to the diagonal stairway, the scaffolding emerges from the bottom floor, lifting eyes to a plywood plane somewhere near the third floor ceiling. While the raw lumber and naked joints suggest a work in progress, their precision of placement and integrity of design reveal a finished product, as meticulously constructed as my father's slowly built backyard platform. Edges meet, angles match, forces and loads are balanced. Several extra steps extend the stairway, and an added handrail leads viewers through a rectangular void in the plywood, into a dark, attic-like space, formerly a traditional gallery. Turning to face the main area, I realized the original polished floor is hidden four feet under the wooden plank platform. Then I saw the water. Still water, just inches deep, covers most of the new surface, filling a large expanse lined with black plastic. Previously unobtrusive white ceiling supports suddenly double; the I-beam trusses, now at eye-level, appear below in the water mirror. As eyes adjust to the altered environment, a subtle change in shadows announces the neonripple--nine concentric circles of light expanding rhythmically, reflecting from the ceiling's far corner, slowly drawing ripples on the water. Eliasson's vision hovers above the routine, the familiar, despite being constructed with pedestrian supplies and practical care. Neonripple's added steps encourage a distancing from reality, an escape similar to our tree house adventures. All my favorite contemporary installations--from the oil reflections of Richard Wilson's 20:50 to the fuzz figures of Tonico Lemos Auad's Antelope Carpet--engender a wonder and a responsiveness I associate with childhood. This feeling might be a postadolescent fabrication, even a cliché, but it's real now, whether or not it was real then. On April 1, Olafur Eliasson's exhibit, titled Your only real thing is time, will make way for the next ICA exhibit, and neonripple will only exist through photographs, videos, and essays left for future interpretation. In contemporary art and childhood play, these elevated structures are not permanent constructed escapes, but the creations leave lasting impressions, ripple through time. PREVIOUS \| TOP \| CONTENTS \| NEXT

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