Thursday 21 October 2010

Tell Tale Heart

I walked through my favourite park the other day (you know, the one with all the conkers) on the way to the hairdressers (again?! Isn't it, like, only two weeks since the last time?! Well, yes, but this time was for colour!) and I always park my car in the same place and walk down the same street. Every time, I pass this art gallery that always looks beautiful from the outside but, for whatever reason, I've never ventured in. This time was different. The week before, I walked past the window and saw a little sculpture; from that moment, I was hooked on it. So hooked, that a week later I couldn't walk past the gallery without going inside.

At this point, it's necessary for me to vocalize a very important point. You know when you walk into a shop and see something you fall in love with instantly? You think, "Wow! I can't wait to go home and tell my friend/spouse/dog (delete as appropriate) how amazing it is!" So you go home and attempt to describe said-object, but something truly remarkable and mysterious happens. In the distance between your brain and their ears, the beloved object morphs into something truly hideous.  Being a relatively-almost-typical girl, I will use the example of shoes. It would go a little something like this: "I've seen these shoes I absolutely love! They're like high heeled-sandals and they're red and they've got suede-y bits on them but the strap and the bit at the front, which is kind of like a butterfly, are shiny and they have little metal studs on". See? They sound shit. In real life, they're sexy as hell. (I got them for £29 reduced from £100 last year. Frickin' bargain!)
Yumsies!

Anyhoooo, what I'm trying to say is that when I describe the sculpture it's going to sound like a piece of tat. It's like this grey cartoony, completely non-scary looking, wolf standing up on it's two legs giving this girl a cuddle and she looks really happy. (At this point, my brain - maybe because of the association with the red on the shoes, or because of the word 'wolf' - totally jumped to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Dammit. I can assure you, the wolf looked in no way like it was trying to trick the girl with cuddles and then eat her.) I don't know what it is about this sculpture, but I bloody love it. If only my bank balance loved it too.

I made the mistake of wandering around the gallery and it wasn't long before I saw another sculpture which my heart then leapt out and clung to. It's a sculpture of this little girl (the one with the shark!) wearing a viking hat (a viking hat?! Is that actually a thing?! Like, is that what they called them?! Surely not, there's no way some buff viking dude said to his wife "darling, have you seen my viking hat?") and she's sat on the back of this huge, gruff, bison. I can't explain what it is about it, but it's amazing! It's like when you're little and you see something you really, really, really want and you think you might die if you don't have it. As I walked away I felt like I left a piece of me behind; a piece shaped like a girl sat on the back of a bison and a girl being cuddled by a wolf. 

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