We are so excited to have interdisciplinary artist, Lou Watson, in Small Space Fest.
Lou creates alternate realities of commonplace sights and occurrences. She takes these everyday moments and shapes them to create a "sideways" perspective. What results is that the "ordinary" moment is seen and heard in a new, compelling and delightful context. We love how she plays, explores and indulges her curiosity. We are looking forward to more of her experimental creations!
Artist Statement: "My son cannot see my face. Or your face. But he can see around the edges of my face, he knows me by my hair, my gait, my smell, and my voice. He never doesn’t know me, but it may take him a decade to be able to recognize you. Finn has face blindness (prosopagnosia). His life is a daily example of seeing and thinking sideways. He nudges me to explore the edges of my own reality, to develop my perception and thus to see the magic that lurks in the overlooked. For instance, the fluff you have in your pocket right now, what could we discover about this lurking lint? We could investigate the science of friction that put it there, the history of denim, we could shake it out and treat it like tea leaves in a cup, to read your trouser pocket fortune, or alternatively we could shake it onto an empty musical staff and play the score that it forms—the pocket fluff waltz.
There are parts of life that don’t need extra seeing, the classic view being already quite wonderful (the sunrise, my lover’s eyes, a beautiful baby), but what happens when I don’t want to get up early enough to watch the sunrise (and it’s probably going to be overcast anyway), my lover’s eyes gaze at me full of questions like “when’s dinner” and “do we have any more toilet paper”, and the beautiful babies, all those beautiful babies, grow up. What happens when wonder has to be arranged with trips to be out in nature, or at a special event, or visiting with kittens? It’s exhausting.
Life and commitments anchor me in place, my place, here in Portland, on the side of NE Sandy Boulevard. So this place must become my palette and my playground. I must dig in and find the wonder of leaf blowers at 7am, the daily commute and the cat’s litter box; I must tilt my head sideways to access the under story of these things, for there the magic and wonder are waiting to turn listening to the neighbor’s dog and emptying the compost from gritting-my-teeth daily grind to golden opportunities to be slack-jawed in awe.
Thankfully (and I am thankful), expanding my reality allows me to keep enchanted with my place, my life and the neighbor’s dog (joy in compost pending...)."
More of Lou Watson's work: Here