"Days of oscillation. Sun enters the courtyard and through the linen-banded blinds, striating light on the wall and then, heavy clouds overhead drape the final struts of winter. Sky, from somewhere. Last night in the hail I biked the street and across bridges, dodging motos, seeing every face and the wake on the river lifting my pant leg with foot raised on the pedal at stoplights, and on, my fingers numb and red carrying the cold like a gift not yet opened.
"The tulips opened a few days ago and began their reach. As the petals open and open, the stems extend outward, curving over the lip of the black glass vase like hands of a clock, a bend at the waist. Each season, we turn with its learning. A friend cupped her hands before her chest to demonstrate the gesture of giving, arching her arms outward and sweeping them back. All of life is the inward, outward backward flowing exchange.
“My dress today is like a shell. The air its water, but so too my body that, in it, feels like air moving, figurative, fugitive. The top, transparent, with ribbing that, like a shell, rakes out from the whorl, the clasp. Shell, holder of what we are, a body, a home, is what we call the envelope of a structure. The skin, least of all things, all depths and salt contains. Layers, layers. Oscillating. I layer to remember as much the air and light, the newspapers, to capture movement free of monolith. Venus standing in the shell holding the dress up with my hand, as she did her nakedness, the waves at my feet.
“Sympathy of fabric, wood batting of the white walls and green doors. To dress and work and live, feeling as one moves through the layers of the house and city lifting the hem, hair in stages of disarray. I move, it moves, air moves, we are still finding the line, mind. Layer upon layer as spring emerges, layers of light through tulle and silk, an avenue of mulberry, a field folded of cotton and flax, a street black and silver with rain and sun steaming on the wetness.
"And then there's memory. I touched the book, the pencil sharpener, the paper weight and think of you. Green as lichen is not color but light, the emanating color from within, rushing out of the eyes to meet the fiery green grass. In drawing, as in dressing, you discover, cover and uncover, to remember. Out the window, I call out to you walking across the courtyard, a bricolage of concrete squares, wood and windows, vines of green and brown leaf falling, drawing down the walls and the sun again. And on the tabletop reflected in the smoky mirror: stockings, vases with flowers falling, notecards, lipstick, various bottles; stacks of books and things on the counter of what each day gives."
- Elizabeth Snowden
Observations, in both image and words, of Volume 14 in our Paris showroom by Elizabeth Snowden for Kamperett.
Jette Organza Tee, Anemoia Blouse in Jade
Brise Skirt in Jade
