Little People, Big Parking Lot

Slinkachu is an English artist who does tiny street installations. I came across the artist’s work for the first time in Powell’s bookstore in Portland. In episode three of the podcast, I talked about the tiny street installations. Powell’s made me feel like the little street figurine: full size in my own scale, in my own moment, but thoroughly dwarfed in the larger context.

Have you looked at our route map lately?

It makes me feel like the little street-friends too. It’s hard to spatially understand having traversed an entire country. Moving through a city, a county, even a state, I can do. But when I examine the map and attempt to reconcile my experience with that curvy blue line, the bigness feels impossible.

Like the bundled little winter-duo in the above photo, who revel along their snowy path but would be addled by the idea of parking lot, my experience of this trip’s geography has been automatically parceled by my inability to feel the whole.

Google maps helps, of course.

But even zooming out to see the whole parking lot doesn’t make you a bigger figurine.

/a