Airstream #2

Airstream #2

In the studio at Mass MoCA, early morning sun strikes the Airstream, so bright it causes me to see small suns when I look away.  Something makes me picture this trailer abandoned in the desert, the black markings IAO 128 visible from far away. A marker of some sort in the shimmering heat. The yellow post-it referred to “black with scratches,” perhaps the person who inhabited my apartment room also inhabited this studio.



Footsteps on the floor above and the sound of a small motor echoing through the concrete and brick below prevent my mirage from continuing; I move my gaze to the rusting steel girders and two orange clamps holding the Airstream in place fifty feet in the air. Out of its element, it appears to be a trolley car waiting, waiting for passengers that never arrive.

Wally Byam had a dream, a dream to build a travel trailer that would move like a stream of air, be light enough to be towed by a car, and create first-class accommodations anywhere.  I doubt he would have imagined this location for one of his beloved trailers.

On the other hand, in 1931 when he began designing his dream trailer, he probably didn’t imagine that in 1969, when NASA landed men on the moon, one of his trailers would be located on the deck of the USS Hornet, to become a place to quarantine Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins when they returned from their epic trip. No one knew if they would bring germs of new diseases back with them. 1969 was also the year Wally conducted a major re-design, adding a foot in length and creating the longer, rounder shape of this 1973 version, which the history web site refers to as “a more distinct bullet shape,” a description I resist.

Watching the trailer, waiting for something to happen, I am startled by a sudden flock of pigeons, their coverts flashing silver, swooping over the Airstream to land on the roof ridge of a building nearby. The quarantine is over, life arrives in this otherwise lifeless landscape.

Airstream #1

    Through the week of the Mass MoCA residency, all of my new writing focused on the Airstream trailer which was my studio view. I freely admitted I became obsessed by the trailer and photographed it once or twice a day, capturing different light, different sky, the play of shadows on the bricks on either side.  Part of my writing tried to unravel why I was so obsessed, but deep in my heart, I already knew why. 
    The Airstream represented my studio. The only studio I’ve ever had. It was my companion on this Visiting Artist adventure. It didn’t move; it provided interesting beauty and it greeted me every day, with it’s shiny body and mysterious black letters and numbers on its side. 
    I connected it, somehow to the gold post-it note that I found folded under a jar of sunflowers, chrysanthemums and strawflowers on my windowsill in the apartment bedroom which was also mine for the week.  The post-it said:
        So black with
        scratches
        maybe some
        writing too?
No one else in the apartment had flowers in her room; no one else found a mysterious note, and almost no one else had the Airstream. Almost, because one of my apartment mates shared the studio with me, but she had a different window, different view, and she didn’t seem to be obsessed with it the way I was. She was actually writing, not gazing out the window!
    This is my photograph on the first morning I spent time in the studio. I instinctively photograph the view from my window whenever I’m in a new place, and at this point, I did it out of habit and because I was intrigued with this industrial landscape which, for a week, would replace my usual view out to flowers, shrubs, an old willow tree and birds at my feeder. I also noticed the clouds, the water flowing below in the canal and loved the bright touch of yellow on the side rails of the bridge across which many small maintenance vehicles and occasional cars would drive throughout the day.
    This was my view. I was hooked.