pineapple,new york & memory

The Piercing Pinneaple

By Marguerita

When Antonio, a friend of mine came by for a coffee at Starbucks, just before saying good bye, he suggested me to enter a proposal for the Building Show. I asked him what was the theme about and he muttered that I should think about a building that fascinates me ….. and somehow, immediately, I just had a crazy thought crossing my mind: Voila, the Pineapple, I mean the Chrysler building.

So, I returned to my studio, and started on drawing and wondering how I came up with that concept. I decided to create my idea into a mixed media Box Art.

The pineapple top is piercing the box through the ceiling.

I searched into my memory and in a flashback, when I was 4 years old, my father and mother and I stopped in New York in 1954 on our way to Brazil. We stayed at the Commodore Hotel across from the Chrysler on 42^nd street and remember vividly staring upwards at the building. But before we got to New York, the plane stopped in Hawaii. And I remember the pineapple trees from Hawaii…. And how I was making drawings with the pencils and paper that the stewardesses gave me as my drinks were spilling over during the flight.

My search about the building, Chrysler and the architect William Van Alen revealed a fantasy inside and out in all materials he was able to invest into the skyscraper, a fascinating idea that illuminates the city and inspires dreamers in the night. He suffered injustice in his lifetime and died in 1954.

I love pineapples and I love the Chrysler’s pinnacle piercing the sky.