[lately] a valentine date in fairyland:

On Tuesday, I had an incredible Valentine's date with two of my favourite people: my mum and my youngest brother. I'd been drooling over GoMA's latest series of installations from afar for some time, and we finally set aside a day to spend strolling through some of the coolest public spaces in this excellent city. It was a perfect Summer day, made cuter by the fact that girls were wandering around with roses and flowers clutched in their hands and couples were eating their v-day lunches on the grass overlooking the river.

I'll be trickling pictures out over the next few days because I took entirely too many for one blog post. I'm sharing these ones first because oh my. I almost couldn't handle the adorableness, and I mean that in all honesty. You know how sometimes you look forward to something for so long and you are so keen for it that the reality can't possibly live up to the expectation? Not so with we miss you magic land!, GoMA's current installation in the Children's Art Centre. The installation, by Perth artists Pip and Pop, was every bit as perfect as the pictures, and more. I only wish mine (which you can click to see in more detail) could do justice to the work.

Since I was a small person, tiny environments and impossible constructs have thrilled me. I remember staring into rock pools with all their minute underwater decor and feeling this aching sense of longing to be there, to actually get inside and live under there, to know what it felt like to live in this miraculous underwater room with walls of shell and hidden life forms everywhere. I felt the same thing when I looked at pictures of impossible treehouses. I didn't want to just see them. I wanted to live in them. I still do.

All that aching wondering came to the fore with we miss you magic land! In amongst pastel hills and valleys, teeny button trees of frothy nothingness, inch-high fawns and mice, and smiling toadstools, I suddenly very much wished I could shrink myself down and clamber all over the fairytale landscape, maybe even stopping to eat some flowers (I hear they're made of sugar).

More realistically, I wished my little niece Amelia could have been there to see it, too. If we looked inside her imagination, I'm pretty sure this is the world we'd find.

we miss you magic land! is on until the 4th of March. You can see pictures of the installation process at this photostream here.

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Conversations:

You all -- I'm genuinely scrabbling for words to find the right ones to reply to your beautiful comments of encouragement and kinship. It's pretty amazing to know that what so many of us experience, we experience together -- even though at times the very nature of the experience leaves us feeling alone. Just as amazing is the fact that you would be encouraged and then bounce the encouragement right back to me. I'm blessed. Thank you, ladies, for your precious comments.

(And Grace, yes, my address is still the same. I'll have to do the Myers Briggs test now. You've intrigued me. I'll get back to you with the results. Love you!)