café play

Café Play was an intervention in public space. Some images were facilitated through conversations in an aged care facility, others were responses to poems or play readings. Most were as a result of a winter residency in Brunswick, on the west-facing window of a café on Sydney Rd. And, like all of the art created on this page, they are ephemera – either blown away, syphoned back into my bucket of sand, or gifted to other people, on journeys of their own.

Many of the images were created while people wandered in, wandered out, ate a meal or imbibed a beverage.

Some people were intrigued enough to begin a conversation or spin a yarn. Others began to see possibilities in the initial patterns, the first stroke across the sand, the picture in the clouds. By verbalising what they were seeing as a possibility, it was possible to make their vision a reality – an incredible honour.

It was a delight when these conversations resulted in someone having a go themselves, getting their own fingernails gritty and playing in the sandpit…

And one evening I chose to pay homage to a single story over multiple images. It was the weekend of the anniversary of Saint-Exupéry‘s death. I first heard The Little Prince as a long-playing record audio. I still remember the smell of the methylated spirits we used to clean the needle and the record. Then, I read it as a book in German, then in French and eventually in English. As well as Letter to a Hostage and Wind, Sand, Stars, it has become a touchstone at various times. To spend an evening in café, deconstructing a sand-dune on a glass surface felt somehow sacred. I don’t know if anyone along Sydney Road noticed, let alone made the connection to the quickly drawn images, nor am I likely to. And that is perfectly fine…