Animating the Interior By Nikē Baneberry

The drawing for this worm’s eye axo shows a community swimming pool composed of various depths of water, different rooms for distinct temperatures and experiences, a sequential ordering of interior and exterior rooms. It is a home for washing; washing clothes, bodies, spirits, the landscape. Lodged into the edge of a hill on a tree line, this watery container holds space for the splattering rain, splashing pools, soaking tubs, and steamy rocks. Water transitions and transforms depending on the conditions and in turn it alters us when we are in its presence. It can cool or heat us, invoke prayer or play. Each ‘water room’ in this building both has and is a doorway into another realm, exploring different theories. In this way, the composition of the building is not closed, in that it leaves room for more rooms to emerge, new ideas to propagate.

Water can be a difficult thing to capture in a worm's eye. When looking up, one must peer through the water, which often distorts and confuses the image of the space. In this way the worm’s eye drawing - in how it defies and diffracts our notions of correctness - is much like peering through water. As light passes through the water, it is known to slow down, creating a refracted effect where objects look warped and broken. When I stand at knee height in a river, I look down and the water reflects an image back at me where my knees are bent. I am genuflecting: bending at the knee to worship the river. This drawing of the worm's eye is like this reflection; a form of worship to the ways water has changed me. The drawing style of the worm’s eye axonometric is notorious for making us bend our necks to the side, to try and make sense of which way is up, as if suspended in a gravity defying medium.

When you look through this drawing, you are often looking through water, peering through the looking glass. It's as if the surface of the drawing is the surface of a body of water. In some areas the water is pooling or collecting into the smallest area possible, coagulating into little ponds, or tubs, or puddles. There is a surface tension in the drawing where the viewer is asked to press themselves against the drawing, breaking through the water and the drawing into the building. This experience of viewing the drawing is much like that of the bathers in the bathhouse: enveloped and engulfed in water.

In this work I speak often of the worms’ eye, but not so affectionately of the worm. This worm, all worms, breathe through their skin. They need water in soil to live and can survive submerged for days. I hope that when someone is engaged with this drawing, they are looking through their own worm's eyes - allowing themselves to be caught in the deluge of wonder - unafraid of drowning. The worm navigates the world below our building, creating worm holes that connect our spaces. They move through the ground, a plane that is often considered by architects inanimate. Their bodies create avenues for oxygen and plant roots to take hold and offer pathways to new perspectives. The worm is my wiggly squiggly friend. Like the tracing of my pen on the page I leave little worm tracks.