Threshold//Unheard Words
Vinyl, Various Locations
2022
"Trust Yourself"
"You are your own best expert"
"It can be OK"
We may all encounter thresholds on a daily basis. Some hold more meaning than others. For most of us, for a while, we have not been allowed to exit through our front doors for the good of ourselves and others. Our safety became our barrier, which in turn, was all our safety.
The door frame provides us with a momentary pause between spaces.
Often we are in very close physical proximity to these mundane edgeland architectural necessities that are in plain sight, yet we rarely look at their features or consider them as a distinct place.
While this power remains relatively hidden from the everyday, this interstice holds great poignancy and potential.
Schirmbeck in Boettger's book on Threshold Spaces concludes that the threshold has a unique and special functional element, yet has remained "a common blind spot". Venturi describes it as literally a "key space" that can "open up" or "close off" a building.
Within this pause, we draw breath for our next physical encounter.
As well as being a different person than the one that left the previous room, we could enter the next space transformed.
Just as we transition between states, perhaps we can use this momentary intermission to transition our emotional selves too.
Using words, phrases and sayings I have during my role as counsellor and Emotional Wellbeing Practitioner these are placed unseen within these threshold spaces. These are words that might have been said, but not heard in the moment, or what I would have liked to have said at the time.
Just as our boundaries are our comfort zones, their edges can barriers to move forward, develop, evolve ourselves.
By placing these markers on these frontiers, I hope they offer encouragement, contemplation, a moment to reflect on what the words mean for you, at this time. The next time you enter or leave they may mean something different.
Serendipity may make your eyes rest on the thing you need to see at the time.
