July 2, 2015
The Shirt Factory
Out for a stroll between rehearsal and a show one night last week, I walked a bit further than I intended and wound up lost enough that I was starting to have doubts of finding my way back in time for my own call time. (I did.) Happily, though, I stumbled across a place I’d been wondering about, which I’d been seeing signs without directions for…and resolved to go back to explore on my day off.
The Shirt Factory is a charming, and weird, in the best way, multi-use space of artists’ studios, shops, and historical displays, converted from a closed shirtwaist factory in Glens Falls, NY.
Preserved and restored sewing machines line the hallways, some of which were built in the 1910’s and used continuously until the factory’s closing in 1996.
Flashbacks to my time spent working on a show about the Triangle factory fire…
The whole place is quiet, and creaky, and feels slightly removed from time, not to even mention the constraints on space, and light, and quiet that I’ve gotten so used to in the city, where they’re not non-existent, but they are so expensive and hard to find. I’d like to live somewhere that places like this are more possible again someday.
I put a quarter into this machine just to see what was in it, and got a pin-back button with a shark’s tooth on it… outside this door…
I wonder what this is about….
April 7, 2011
Cloisters
I had an old friend in town this past weekend and we went to visit The Cloisters in upper Manhattan. (The Cloisters is a museum of medieval European/Christian art and architecture, and the building is actually assembled from bits and pieces of ruined abbeys and monasteries from the 12th-15th centuries.)
I was smitten over and over by the sight of gardens, sky and light through multiple iterations of windows and passageways.
There’s a metaphor about confinement, revelation, seeking, labyrinths, and illumination hiding in there somewhere….
