Open House has been and gone, and the big dolls are back upstairs instead of hogging the living room. Its only a couple of months until the next Open House, but its good to keep them on their toes and stop them getting too comfy.
In my latest ‘de-Open House’ of our home, I have hung one of my big pinhole photograph prints in the living room. And it has started my brain off on an old tack.
Its one from a series for my Arts degree final piece; a research project involving kiln formed glass artifacts and pinhole photography. It was all about the house behind where we lived. Empty for ten years, scheduled for redevelopment, I looked at the house day after day after day. And then one day climbed over the wall.
Deemed ‘A house of no significance’ the property was to be demolished. The council said it had no history. Obviously, if you know me at all, that was red rag to bull territory. I found its history, stuck between the changing fashions in layer upon layer of wallpaper. I spent hours in the house, took hundreds of photos, inspected its scars, and watched its final moments.
After the house was no more, we moved. The story of the house is in one of my overcluttered filing drawers. The best glass pieces were sold, and the rest relegated to a tupperware pot right in the furthest corner of the loft, ignored and gathering dust. I couldn’t get started again. The kiln I had bought spent five years under a blue tarpaulin at the end of the garden before I sold it again, unused. The woman I bought it from had never used it either. I hope it had better luck in its new home. I forgot about being a glass artist, and eventually picked up pen and paper and began sketching the people on the beach. And then of course, they grew tails.
Being stuck headfirst into mermaids, I haven’t thought about this body of work apart from raiding photos for my Alice pictures. Today though I can hear Mr Swift talking. Born in the house in 1911, he lived there until 1994. I tracked him down and asked for his memories. He was cross with me when I interrupted his telling tales of the war in Egypt, trying to redirect him back to the house. “Do you want my story or not?” he said. I did want his story, was greedy for it – but I only wanted the narrative for the house. The house was the star, the family the supporting cast, demonstrating how lives and expectations changed.
During our very first Open House, a lovely older couple visited, and seemed a little stunned: turned out, they used to own our house. They sat on the sofa and looked around, and said “all we can see is what isn’t here”. Their wonderful 1970s home improvements, modernising a bleak Victorian terrace, all gone. Extra walls and concrete fireplaces with modern (condemned) gas fires, ripped out and a Victorian wood burner back in the open chimney. They’d rented the house out for years. Tobacco and coffee stained wood chip covered all, which I’d stripped off revealing orange or green plaster walls, and grafitti: Arsenal, Slade and John Player Special. Our house is held now in that state of being ‘un-done’. People ask blithely ‘done any more to the house?’ expecting progress. No. Nothing to report. Just a few more mermaids and a Giant Alice.
This morning a Guardian report from the Edinburgh Festival caught my eye. “Buildings tell stories“. Theatremaker Geoff Sobelle, has created Home, where on stage, a typical two-up, two-down house fills up with all its previous occupants at once. Sobelle, inspired by ripping up layers of lino in his kitchen, says “My house is my home, but it was someone else’s before that. We share spaces in ways we don’t even see.” Ours is not a small house, but after more than a hundred years, many of multi occupancy, it would be seriously cramped if everyone materialised at once. I’ve been told snippets of stories. Our house has been a welcoming one, with parties and laughing, a readily opened door; although I do know someone who wasn’t happy here, in the damp front room of a student let.
Somehow I think it is time to listen to my house again. There is work to be done, practical and important and necessary. Things are going to change. But do you know, I think I’ll treat myself to getting a book printed of the Dwelling of No Significance project. One I can put on the shelf; a present from one house to another.
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