The Grand Thing Appears

"Feeding Time"  acrylic, oils, collage.
From Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing

Over the past few months I've been posting about a Thing being designed and built by my brother Architect. (You can see those here , here  and here.) As with Shaun Tan's Lost Thing the Thing my brother made was hiding virtually in plain sight since July.  Pieces of its assemblage were gradually amassed from boxes of miscellany, from Goodwill and St. Vincents, and wherever. 

 

Architect knew, of course, what the Thing would be but he still had to work out how he was going to incorporate the bits and baubles. (The actual making was quite its own adventure, so I will be doing a separate post on that soon.)  Meanwhile, here's how the reveal went down.)

On January 1 in the late afternoon, people began gathering at Architect's home.  The majority of them were children, friends and acquaintances of Architect's grandson. The first thing they saw was this sculpture standing in the yard.

There was quite a crowd, many wearing costumes. 

  

 

Many brought dishes to share, 

some of which celebrated the theme of the evening.

The theme was Dr. Who, as you may have already noted.  After 50+ guests finished noshing on the lovely variety of foodstuffs, the large wall-sized screen was rolled down and many chairs arranged. The lights were lowered and the first movie of the night was presented.

For a number in the audience, the story was new. There were many oohs and aahs as various Whovian threads from the past 50 years  were re-raveled and explained.

Then . . . a break . . . and the much awaited reveal of the Grand Thing.  A loud, grinding noise was heard, as if some oddly-shaped craft was materializing within the walls of the house! "What is that?" someone cried out.  A light went on at the end of the hall and a sign that hadn't been there at the beginning of the party now glimmered.

The kids rushed down the hall and Architect's grandson opened the yellow door.

"Who has the key?" "How can we get in?"  The kids quickly checked their pockets: all of them had received a key with their invitation.  It didn't take them long. And just as the story tells, it was bigger on the inside. Two whole floors of bigger!  Here's the first set of images.

 

This phone worked, by the way, as did this one below. Architect told me later that he heard several kids calling their friends and parents to tell them, very excitedly, that they were "calling from the Tardis!"

End of Part 1

Part 2 

The Grand Thing Appears: The Movie

will be posted on January 25th