On the Thursday, we were lucky enough to visit the St James Theater and enter the building. Below are some of the photos I took.
I found the tour of the theater very interesting and informative. It was fascinating to see the marks of history within the site as well as those left more recent. It was an odd collision of old and new in a grimey way, not the way you see old villas done up with a touch of modern, but in the combination of the unwanted, derelict and unimportant from different periods of time. The site had an eerie feeling about it. The dark corners, the unknown at the end of the hallway, a sense that everything had been dropped and left abruptly, an impression of mystery.
A motif carried from my observations in my first week during the exploration of the exterior of the site was the need to look up, from a different perspective, notice the happenings of above the head. The whole site included very detailed and beautifully crafted ceiling panels (as shown in the photos above). This made you stare upwards, experience the space from a different angle.
I loved the experience of visiting and exploring the site. Although I can appreciate its importance, I sometimes get a little bored with the history aspect of a site. With this said, I was fascinated and engrossed with the St James Theaters past and its evolution through societal changes.
After the visit to the theater, I created and analysis of colour within the space on a printed plan and section of the building.
Above is a printed plan view of the site. With this plan I communicated the natural light and shadow I experienced in the foyer space. The reason why only half of the foyer space is expressed through this is because currently that is the only part of the foyer that still exists. The section of the foyer leading out on to Queen St was demolished in order to create an apartment complex. Although I am possibly interested in using the whole foyer space for my intervention, I only depicted the colour I experienced in the parts of the foyer I was able to access.
Above is an overlay of butter paper onto the plan. With this layer I wanted to explore the movement that existed within the space when it was used for its built purpose. The foyer space connected Queen St and Lorne St and this allowed people to walk from Queen St through to Lorne St. I mapped the movement of people in the space as I always like to think of people as a part of the space rather than a viewer of the space.
Above is my final layer of butter paper. On this sheet I explored the colour palette of the ceiling panels through a combination of acrylic paints and water. I wanted to explore the colour of ceilings through this because I found this was the most definitive focus on colour in the foyer space. Prior to this exercise I looked into some designer and artist models. One that I am interested in is Georgia O’Keeffe. She is a painter that often uses acrylic on canvas. This is the reason I wanted to experiment with acrylics on butter paper. I also used to love to paint all the time with acrylic paints and ever since the beginning of this project I have been eager to get back into it. Not only am I inspired by O’Keeffe’s softness, form and depth in her work, but I also love the medium that she used.
Spatial Design by Ciara 