
Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 12 July 2024
I've rarely been to a place that so deeply embodies the human need to express their hopes and fears through architecture.
This digest revels in the in-between, the transitional, the presence of absence. My camera with its dials and knobs and sharp focus has taken me into the blur of things. It has taught me that because things can't be measured it doesn't mean that it isn't there. The spirit of things, the essence of our places is as real as my shutter button.
I've rarely been to a place that so deeply embodies the human need to express their hopes and fears through architecture.
This is one of the most powerful pieces of nonverbal communication I have encountered. In our modern age, the equivalent might be Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
This is a place of half-light, where ideas ignite in a murky soup that verges on alchemy. Here, received light is sculpted, shaped, and transformed into palpable emotion.
I’m mesmerised by it. The carving is a breathtakingly beautiful, organic embodiment of a whale.
My own work is an aggregate attempt at trying to untangle the conflicts that arise inside my head by finding hope in the pattern of buildings, places and humans around me.
As I walk through the streets of Lynn, it feels as though a switch in my brain has been turned on.
Reaching for my camera, I pause, feeling something profound at play. This building is pure atmosphere, and I feel emotionally connected to it. I set the camera aside and reach for my sketchbook, determined to capture the spirit of this place, to convey how it makes me feel.
I chuckle at the coincidence that an act of genius of the purest wisdom should find itself settling into a combination of shapes that intimate the face of an owl.
For me, this is a moment of sanctuary: the ragged, ruddy fox against the monolithic west front. I can’t help but wonder how many generations of foxes have graced the curlicue and the curvilinear with their quatrefoil pads.