Transparency and Walls

Metaphors were the name of the game today. I went to the hear El Anatsui, an artist, talk about his installation, Gli (wall) at the Rice Gallery at a lunchtime gallery talk. I went with a friend and her son. The work was incredible. It was a beautiful, colorful mesh of metal, made from the tops of liquor bottles. His walls were moving with breeze, and were transparent, and lovely. It was a warm feeling that was created by the work, and the people you could see walking throughout the gallery admiring it. In a statement about the work, Anatsui said, "I think that walls are human constructs that are meant to block views, but they block only the view of the eye...not the imaginative view."

I was enjoying standing there, enjoying the art, enjoying being out doing something fun. There have been so many health related changes in my life, it is sometimes hard to keep up. I feel like the stuff I have enjoyed in the past, I haven't done quite as often. I spend a lot of time dealing with doctors, insurance companies, red tape. I spend a lot of time being more tired than I would like. However, today's art made me think about all this stuff in a bit of a different way.

Most people have had the feeling of being blocked by an obstacle in their path, as we go through life. I am feeling like sometimes lately, rather than a stumbling block, that the obstacle is a wall. I can't see what is on the other side. However, being in the gallery today, and seeing these walls, shifted my thinking to a different perspective. I am working now on visualizing what life looks like on the other side of the wall...and keeping the images of the beautiful transparent walls in mind. When the Berlin wall came down, it was a time of joy, and reuniting--healing what had been broken. The Western Wall in Jerusalem is a wall of prayer and faith, and it symbolizes survival. I can now see that the wall currently staring me in the face in my life is a temporary obstacle, and I will get around it, over it, or plow right through to the other side...to embrace what I can see in my mind's eye.