2 minute read
the house as an upcycled object
ANGELA SILVER
For several years the house had been a husk, uninhabited and without upkeep. Coastal storms had reduced the roof to a series of holes. Rather than tearing it down, a local man had agreed with the owner that he would dismantle the house in exchange for its building materials, which he planned to upcycle. There was a slow motion tempo to his labour through the building’s erasure joist-by-joist, day-by-day. Concurrently, I was trying to salvage an older coastal house whose north-facing side sloped eight inches lower than its south side.
I returned to the house a few times, lamenting the building as it vanished. The piano, however, was a consolation for it conjured up my paternal grandmother, Evelyn, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, folding her body over her keyboard, her fingers spanning and soaring on its keys. Knowing the piano was destined for the landfill, I cajoled my husband to the house to retrieve its piano keys; the man happened to be there and helped as we pried out keys and hammers.
As we disentangled them from the soundboard, the wires eventually loosened and an interwoven photographic negative was released. The darkness of the negative made it difficult to see, but I could make out human figures. Returning home, I found an online app to reverse it. The photograph reveals a family preserved, a woman smiling with her children, a gathering of men standing around on the Nova Scotia beach; a century onward, we can feel the sun’s warmth. Despite the lack of folkloric objects hidden in the walls of this house, the negative is a fortuitous talisman.
ANGELA SILVER, PhD, is a visual artist whose most recent work is being realised at Place des Montréalaises, a public commemorative space honouring the women of Montreal. Her work can be found at angelasilver.com
