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The Concept

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The Starlingship will be many things.

First and foremost: an imaginative, immersive art experience.

Those who enter the exhibit become temporal and spatial travelers.

Visitors to a time-paused moment of daily life, in distant space.

A moment inside a miniature alien apartment building.

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They'll step through a portal to a faraway space station, populated on a Lilliputian scale.

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A large room, carpeted, with several potted trees, chairs and tables covered in fuzzy draping. Centerpoint of room is a U-shaped, 5-story miniature apartment building made of shelves. Its roof is covered with grass-like carpet and mountain-like planters with small houseplants. Tiny elevators lead between shelves. Tiny cable cars and staircases lead from apartment roof onto the tables, and to a gift-shop shelf full of jewelry, books and crafts.

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By creating this otherworldly scene in a tiny size, I delve into my fascination with how meanings change when the scale gets bigger or smaller.

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When I create dioramas, small found objects tend to get re-imagined as larger ones.

A bottle cap becomes a pie pan. A blister-pack of pills becomes a handful of muffin tins and egg cartons. Vitamin capsules become eggs. Beads are berries on top of muffins.

Some pill-bottle desiccant canisters go on a shelf as food cans, while others are emptied to scatter sprinkles on clay cookies.

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3 photos from a diorama of an alien bakery. One shows a shelf with some food cans and a pie and muffin made of clay. The second shows another shelf of pastries: a muffin tin filled with clay muffins topped with blue beads, a tray of flat cookies covered in sprinkles, and an open-topped pie in a bottle cap, filled with red beads. Third shows a green toy soldier with gold clothing painted on, stirring a giant bowl of dough, with a carton of translucent eggs in the foreground and an octopus using a rolling pin in the background.

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By making the scene otherworldly as well as miniature, the potential widens.

In outer space, maybe some tiny creatures cook their omelettes with clear yellow eggs, instead of opaque white ones. Perhaps some of them sleep in fuzzy tubes that look just like hair rollers, or bathe in tubs shaped like seashells.

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However, my own creative approach to tiny things... is one of many.

Some of the greatest joy in this project is going to come from seeing the variety of styles that other artists contribute to it.

The diversity of the community in this little space station should reflect the diversity of my local artist community.

That is my greatest hope for the Starlingship.

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You can scroll down to see some photos of how I mocked up a sample exhibit based on this idea... or just continue to the next page.

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Next page: What is it?

Arrow pointing right.

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A still photo of a half-scale model I built of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. Zoomed out far enough to see the edges. One side has printed descriptions of the apartments in small frames. The walkways and roof are made of green yoga-mat foam, edged with fuzzy fabric cut from a green towel to resemble grass.

Animated GIF of a half-scale model I built of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving, two to each floor. A colorfully-painted elevator made from a plastic bottle travels up and down, as my hand pulls cords connected to it.

A second GIF of the same half-scale model I built of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. This animation shows the model being turned on a turntable, to show both the inner and outer sides. The resolution isn't high enough to get a clear view of the apartments, but it can be seen than the outer side is closed off, with only doors and windows showing.

Another still photo of half-scale model of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. Can see that the top 2 apartments are a densely-furnished 2-story cube and a bare 1-room cube with a large robot in it. Second two are a mostly-silver room with a red display of tiny jewelry on one side, and a room with a humanoid doll standing under a raised bunk bed, but not clear enough to see much more. Some seashells barely visible in the right-side lowest unit.

Another still photo of half-scale model of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. Same as previous one but centered more on the side with the elevator, made of a colorfully-decorated plastic bottle on strings.

Another still photo of half-scale model of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. This one is focused on the side where descriptions of the apartments are mounted in small frames shaped like doors. Too small to read the words on them, but they are some of the 6 example cubes that I'll describe later on.

Another still photo of half-scale model of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. This one is also centered on the elevator, showing how the strings that control it go up into an opening in the up-slanted side of the roof, and then loop back down through holes in the walkways.

Another still photo of half-scale model of 6 apartment cubes on 3 stories of wire shelving. This one is focused on the outer side. Top two cubes show a large faux-stained-glass door and a clear wall with one small door. Second two are a red cube with a rectangular door and window, and a blue cube with one small hatch-like door and the rest decorated with strings of beads. Bottom two: a red cube with 1 window and no door, and a black-and-white one with an ornate wire door holding 1 colored circle of glass.

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Next page: What is it?

Arrow pointing right.

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