Thursday, March 12, 2009

Red and Green

This is in a park in Bangkok.   The religious architecture in Thailand is evidence for me of the power of art.  Thailand is a really poor country.  So many houses look like they were bombed or too rotten to inhabit yet they are inhabited.  Many people build shacks out of whatever they can find and live between train tracks or under a highway permanently.  It's a way of life.  Not a chosen lifestyle, but not temporary.  Yet, amidst all this there is the most beautiful, bright complicated artwork I have ever seen; buildings covered inside and out with texture, color, imagery, patterns, plants and gold.  Transcendent.
This is the inside of the structure I'm standing by in the photo above.
Each tiny texture bit in this photo is a separate tile.  So many temples have roofs covered with these tiles in floral patterns that have an electricity to them, like they aren't cemented down, but about to fly off into the wind.  They are so colorful and intricate.  Like almost everything else in or on temples, it is tactile, like I can imagine people placing each piece, one by one.  I also want to touch it and make it myself.  It's inspiring.  Maybe inspiration is true transcendence.   Anyway, I took this photo because I like the contrast between the tiles and the white/gray wall.

I have a date with a glue gun (or a bed?...)


2 comments:

mudly said...

wow. those are something else. individual tiles you say?? and i'm sure the pictures don't come close to doing it justice.

megan bisbee said...

No, the pics aren`t so good. We are longing for a better camera soon and more memory cards so we can take bigger pics. For now, this is what we have. It still gets a hint of the fantastic architecture, though.