'Celestial Blue 2020', Debbie Budenberg
The final edit of the epic installation that spanned space and time, location and intention.
Celestial Blue, aka The Blue Room.
See the documentation of the installation HERE
DEBBIE BUDENBERG
Celestial Blue, 2020 (aka ‘the blue room’)
Celestial Blue was a project undertaken for ‘Unus Multorum 2020’, Plas Bodfa, Anglesey. However, the Covid 19 pandemic eventuated in the suspension of public events; imposing a hiatus on all artists due to deliver or install artwork in exhibitions. Artists, artworks and planned exhibitions were cancelled, postponed, or left in a state of limbo for an indeterminate period of time. Julie Upmeyer, owner of Plas Bodfa, and curator of Unus Multorum, responded generously, resourcefully, and imaginatively to the forestalling of the planned exhibition by extending the length of the exhibition until the end of 2020 to allow artists the opportunity to realise their work when restrictions ended; hosting online artists talks; and delivering a series of curator guided tours of the proposed artworks, artworks already installed prior to lockdown, and with the passage of time, those works installed after lockdown ended.
I had already spent many weeks at Plas Bodfa preparing my installation space prior to the looming Covid pandemic. I left my space one particular day having painted its walls, ceiling and floor a mesmerising 'celestial blue'. I was feeling excited, keen and eager to return and create the installation in the space with the ethereal, luminous, and radiant qualities it now embodied and emitted. Little did I know that was to be my last working day at the house for quite some time to come. Lockdown was a shock. I felt a sense of loss and mourning for Celestial Blue. The freedom of movement and interaction with others we normally take for granted was no longer permissible. Confined to the home, its location far away from Plas Bodfa, I felt desolate and detached. I yearned to return to Plas Bodfa, be back in the celestial space, and realise my work. It was the end of March, the weather was cold, and any carefree spirits we may previously have enjoyed, dissipated with growing concerns for the safety and survival of people, jobs, and communities. I took refuge with Andrew in our home; both of us grateful to have each other, a garden to escape to, reasonable good health, and a support bubble permitting us to sustain contact with family members in need of our support. We were only too aware others were less fortunate.
Meanwhile, across the border in Wales, the Lewis family ‘hi jacked’ the ‘Celestial Blue’ space ... a phrase used by Julie herself to describe the deed! The space offered a place of refuge in uncertain times for the young family to retreat to and inhabit; an inspirational space for them to unleash their imagination; and a place for the children to take ownership of and enjoy. I vividly recall my last day working at Plas Bodfa when Ffion laid claim to the space. Ffion had accompanied her mum, Julie to survey the room and its blue transformation. In one intuitive, joyful, and spontaneous moment of inspiration, Ffion rushed to the adjoining room to collect her toy table and chairs. Together, Julie and I witnessed the unfolding of the defining event; both of us transfixed, silent and emotional as we watched Ffion deliberately and reverently set out her table and chairs in a circle in the ‘blue room’ for her family to come together and share communion. At that moment I experienced revelation through the eyes, mind and heart of a child, and an answer to the question I had intended to pose in the installation: does that which we place our faith in to sustain us, also sustain ‘the other’ and community?
During lockdown, Julie would regularly send me videos of the family and their creative activities in ‘the blue room’.... what they fondly came to refer to the space as. My early feelings of dislocation, loss, separation, mourning and grief were alleviated as I watched the family videos; and I felt intimately connected and included in their world. They affirmed notions of the sacred as embodied in the authentic lives of individuals, families and communities rather than in some distant, cosmic eternal space lying beyond this earthly realm. Any, reservations, I had initially felt about the family using the ‘freshly painted’ and ‘prepared’ celestial space quickly dissipated as I recognised the theological call to give way to those whose need is greater and more pressing than our own. I wished to participate, enter into dialogue with them, and continue the conversation personally, creatively and theologically. In response, I created ‘the celestial stage': a large celestial blue coloured tarpaulin hanging from three bedroom windows of my house and splayed out onto the patio to form a platform and backdrop for me to enact out my original intensions for Celestial Blue co-joined with a renewed insight, inspiration, knowledge, and enrichment gifted me from the Lewis family and their activities in the ‘blue room’. The hiatus imposed on me and the creation of Celestial Blue by lockdown had allowed for further developments and insights to evolve in my thinking. The Lewis family and their activities in the blue room became integral to the work and its underlying concepts. They embodied the particular and the universal, individual and group, family and community, and the sacred and material, at multifarious stages of existence.
The Covid pandemic and lockdown heightened feelings of isolation, separation, exclusion, loneliness, detachment, dislocation, segregation, opposing realms, distinct spaces, bubbles, specific places and geographical locations. Although, Julie and I were each confined to our separate space, place and geographical location in the context of linear time the resultant artwork transcends these perceived boundaries and limitations to create a blended realm in which time is also suspended, simultaneous, and eternal. Celestial Blue challenges dualistic thinking about the sacred and profane, creator and created, material and spiritual, finite and eternal; and notions of our material finite existence within the context of a particular space, place and linear time. It engenders a sense of community, fellowship, and commonality; and the embodiment of the sacred in the authentic everyday lives of individuals, families and communities.
While, my desire for Celestial Blue was to transcend the distinctions and limitations of space, place, and notions time as linear and finite, I do not wish to deny acknowledging the particularities of those lives denied authentic personhood.
I am grateful to Julie Upmeyer for the opportunity to create Celestial Blue at Plas Bodfa and for her continual support throughout; and to the Lewis family for their participation in the project.
Debbie Budenberg
2021
Celestial Blue challenges our perception of the dualities of space, place and time. It seemingly blends preconceived notions of the particular, secular, material, and finite with those of the sacred, universal, cosmic, and eternal. Distinctions, separations, boundaries or limitations conceived of and applied to our knowledge, experience and understanding of the cosmic and earthly realms; creators and created; sacred and profane; spiritual and material; bubbles, spaces, places and geographical locations; time as linear, finite, cyclical, eternal or simultaneous; and the existence of the self and our communities within them all, is challenged in the artworks melding of dualistic beliefs, disparate realms and preconceived realities with embodied notions of the sacred, universal, cosmic, eternal, cyclical and simultaneous in the everyday lives and experiences of individuals, families and communities. Celestial Blue questions notions of faith: that which we believe and trust in to sustain us and our communities.