Miniature Otherworlds

Hayley Theyers

A Covid-19 Lockdown portfolio published 01 May, 2020.

As the world about us started getting smaller I found myself immersed in these even smaller worlds. The mythical and the living combine in these miniature otherworlds, built with the plants and fungi I find on my morning walk and the toys brought out of the attic at such a time. Magical creatures are in peril, or ride heroically to the rescue in a fantastical storybook land.

Back in the world before the pandemic, where people roamed where they liked to meet whom they wished, I was working on a series of miniature worlds. I began by intrepidly visiting a model railway club, made the acquaintance of enthusiasts, and began to make art with their model trains and houses. I was looking forward to further Lilliputian adventures.

Then, quite suddenly, my world itself had shrunk. Could I still amuse myself creatively?

Everywhere people are confined between four walls, cupboards are being searched and hidden things we know of or suspect but seldom see are coming out; alongside old photos, board games and broken gadgets and a letter or two, is a box of toys lent by a friend.

 If we can, we also forage in the nature around us, the nature we can reach if we are lucky; at home and outside, on my daily walk in an abundant nature, magic is afoot. I see the fairy rings of mushrooms in the field, the sparkling of berries on the hedge, and the Kauri, suffering its own pandemic and long in danger of becoming as mythical as the unicorn in the toybox.

 It is time to play, to put toys and nature together to come alive and make miniature otherworlds, readable as parables, hints of unknowable fables lurking on the fringes of the collective unconscious, as when in a dream we know a strange thing is but will never know why.