A Dream Fulfilled: original car park art

Having spent my life struggling to achieve an appropriate level of mediocrity in my chosen profession I had few ambitions left before Time's bony hand grasped my soul. However, one of the remaining ambitions was to inspire 'art of the car park' and thereby widen the appreciation of this modern architectural phenomenon as true heritage before we sleep walk into a carbon neutral (car park free?) future. In my blog 'The Future Will Be Better Tomorrow' I speculated that my work was done; there was no need to blog any more as the world had now woken up to this important issue. Almost immediately the Scottish independence referendum quickly brought me out of retirement; shockingly there was not one mention of car parks in the SNP manifesto. THEN, my inbox pinged, my heart leapt and my soul sang when 'Curfew 1: Three Car Parks' (below) was sent to me for my consideration.

When you go into a car park, how do you feel? Do you develop a different perspective on life? Does the sheer geometry of the location inspire you? Does the bleakness of concrete and metal overwhelm you? Or do you just get your car keys out, open the car door and drive off, missing the possibility of possibility.

In the case of this immensely talented young artist, car parks have inspired her to map her subconscious psychogeographical experiences in those spaces to create something new, and special, and wonderful. In a previous blog I considered Picasso's view that, 'art is the lie that enables us to realise the truth'. Little did I think that I would see the embodiment of Picasso's thesis.

'Curfew 1: Three Car Parks' has an inherent truth. Study it closely and our human interaction with car parks begins to make sense. The rawness of it speaks to the very soul of soullessness that car parks appear to embody. But the piece takes that bleakness, reflects it, deflects it and then fashions an impossible beauty from it. Thus it goes beyond Picasso, it has strong echoes of Nietzsche. I would hesitate to go as far as asserting that standing in a car park is like gazing into the abyss, but it is a locus enabling you to face down the monsters within you to allow true artistic release. As Neitzsche stated in the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”. 

This work is a dancing star.

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Aren't car parks wonderful. Isn't art wonderful. Isn't life great. Art makes life worthwhile and car parks make a trip to the shops bearable - apologies for the bathos - so excuse me while I wipe a manly tear from my eye and go and lie down for a bit.

Curfew 1: Three Car Parks lithograph by Sarah Fischer