with a starry night madeleine randmaa

with a starry night

WORDS by MADELEINE RANDMAA ART by GRAEME FISHMAN

The ceiling is towering; the

floors concrete. The air is light and cool, and the sounds in the gallery are soft and silvery. It feels hazy like early morning, though it’s almost noon. I notice the dreariness outside, as the clouds refuse to give way to my favourite star. My heliotropic humanness wishes for the clouds to part, to allow a ray to shine through the glass windows. There are one or two other people observing the art, but even more black suits with brass badges observing the people. But there’s a presence in the room, seemingly stronger than the other humans—the presence of Vija Clemins’ drawings. They hang on the white walls, her work an extension of her being. The distilling qualities that I experience in the gallery feel so resonant to the images on the wall as if they were consciously echoing one another.

Celmins once said in an interview that she wants her art to fit her, as though her being could be carried within the edges of the frame. She began her career by drawing every single object in her house, everything she ate, but she didn’t build it up to something it was not. Rather she detailed the everyday and reflected her attentiveness and care for her surroundings into her work. As she became enthralled by astronomy photographs, time and space slowed down under her pencil, paintbrush or charcoal. Night skies were her new subjects. She managed to squeeze the seemingly infinite onto canvases, big and small. This distillation is what entices me; it makes me consider time in different ways. I imagine the time it takes to draw out a constellation, the time the universe took to be like this, and the time it takes me to look and feel in awe.

Melancholic, microcosmic, meditative, infinite, straightforward, yet utterly complex. Paradoxical in a way. Untitled #1 is in a smaller room off the main gallery, surrounded by other re-creations of the sky and drawings of sandy dunes and pebbly beaches. It is smaller than most of her other works, in a thin milky white frame. It’s difficult to take in the drawing from up close. The stars blur, but as I step back, they somehow morph into a pattern of meticulously placed specks. I see my face reflected in the glass, white speckles of stars run along my cheeks and nose. This place in the universe that Celmins has chosen is unique, the photograph she chose to bring to life will probably never

be seen or photo probabl graphed again. The sky may look the same every night, but it really is different. Celmins took a little piece of the deep speckled canvas above and pressed it into the paper in front of her.

I too am curious when I look up at the night sky. When the stars are out, I am reminded of mellow summer nights near the lake, knees pulled close to my chest, neck craned. Wonder filtered through my eyes as I traced lines between each dot, making my own constellations. Or at the Science Centre, where my brother and I would race to the space exhibit. When I arrived, I immediately felt encapsulated in the giant glittering diagrams on the walls. All the monumental nebulas and spiral galaxies seemed too colourful to be real. How could something that looks so human, like a paint splatter on an inky surface, exist without our own doing? Or in my Grandparent’s abode, space magazines scattered around the house, beneath piles of New Yorker’s and last weekend’s newspaper. Staring into photographs of how the Big Bang happened, step-by-step, is still too much for my brain. Or the assertion my Mother shared one day, and now I can’t seem to stop telling others too, maybe in hopes of seeing their faces as they try to fathom the fact. That there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on Earth.

In the ever-expanding universe, there is a place in the sky that looks almost like the drawing hanging in front of me. Though space is so unknown, I find comfort here. Its infinite and dynamic qualities are so overwhelming and yet this image simply demonstrates a serene human perspective, as it dots my pupils with a starry night.

As I let Celmins’ work sink in, it has become obvious how much of the everyday I take for granted. The beauty that exists in the smallest things are carriers of joy and amazement, feelings that are so invaluable. I often think that elegance must be something complex and out of reach, but more often than not, real grace and delicacy can be found in the little bubbles of our lives. Whether it be the starry sky on a cloudless evening, the transient eye-contact with someone on the street or the sparkle in your dog’s eyes when you tell them you’re going for a walk—they all hold their place as an understated constant of beauty, charm and comfort. x