René makes 3D mockups and scale models. I don’t know how he manages to work with such fiddly perfection. Though I can imagine how satisfying it is.
At a dinner party in his workshop, a large wooden mock-up hung on the wall behind our heads. It was more like an abstract work of art, and it could have been an overview of anything. Except it wasn’t.
It was my garden!
He had made Schellingwoude – from the little church and trees in the lower left-hand corner, to my tiny garden house in the upper right. At the very tippy top, across from the row of houses on the dike, along that little inch or 2 of water, that’s us. From such a distance, and in this wafer thin, laser cut wood, it’s hard to get beyond the Monopoly-house feeling of the Dutch landscape. And I wonder, if the people who commissioned this work were only thinking of housing – the continuous major threat to our green.
But I love that Rene took the time to include the garden. And I know that he appreciated those tiny rows of teeny houses, and the full spectrum of what they represented in whatever presentation was made.
