Sometimes the fun of miniature making is capturing something— in this case, the feeling I had watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a bulky tv in my bedroom as a teenager and finding her room to be a comforting place ❤️🪦 Wood box with an interior of cardstock, chipboard, fabric, wire, paint and scrap material, 7”x7”
i started working on this thing back in january, as russian troops were gathering around our borders, and i got around to finishing it a couple months later, after they retreated from kyiv and my lucky family and i were able to get back home.
for half of the process i was asking myself, “is making this even worth it if it’s going to be bombed to ashes in a couple of weeks?” (the answer was yes); for the other half, i was asking myself how and why do you even make a house now that there are dead and gutted houses all around (the answer was “well, what else is there to do anyway”).
was aiming for the “small ukrainian granny’s apartment” vibe with soviet era “ugly 70s brown” color furniture and a bit of a witchy/magical realism touch :’) details + a bit of ukrainian folk trivia below!
I love to garden and watch as tiny little saplings twist and turn as they grow “from the ground up” ( #julyminifun prompt) . This little room box was inspired by my love for gardening. When I am not in my studio I am often outside working on my yard.
The Aftermath Dislocation Principle part 3: The Bridge, by Jimmy Cauty, a 1:87 scale dystopian cityscape.
Podcast: A Life In Miniatures
'People become writers for myriad reasons - novelist Max Porter suspects that for him the crucial spur was his fascination with Bekonscot model village, which he visited scores of times as a child. It was there that he discovered the pleasure and value of people watching at a life-size and miniature scale.
In 'A Life In Miniatures' he returns to Bekonscot to celebrate not just the care, craft and love that have gone into its construction, but also the opportunity it affords to create complicated stories out of the various people and scenes on show. He interrogates whether these places are necessarily escapist and reactionary or offer a more radical opportunity to critique society.
He visits Jimmy Cauty of KLF fame to hear about the dystopian model village he has toured around the world in a shipping container and talks with Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain, about the miniature appearance of a miniature village that appears in that book. Max also speaks with academic Melinda Rabb about the rise of miniatures in 18th Century England - and how smart phones are keeping the tradition alive in various unexpected ways.