The view from the Highline, November 2011

The Plain of Heaven was the title of an art exhibition that Leslie and Odin went to on their first “official” date, back in November 2005.  The exhibition was inspired by the impending redevelopment of the High Line, at the time, a disused elevated rail structure that runs up the west side of Manhattan, as it was about to be transformed into a public park.  “The Plain of Heaven took off from this elegiac and exciting moment of transformation to consider how we imagine, and long for, inaccessible spaces; the relationships between transfiguration, destruction and rebirth; the opposition between nature and the urban environment; and more generally, the way in which we re-mystify the world we already know.”

Leslie likes to think that this is where they fell in love, although that’s probably just nostalgia.  And how appropriate, as the exhibit itself was about “the desire we have for inaccessible spaces, and what happens after we discover them. It is about the nostalgia we develop for things not yet gone, and how it colors our present experience of those things. It is about how knowledge and experience come to bore us, about how we tire of understanding the world (or at least think we do). It is about how we consistently remystify landscape, looking for and creating new places to imagine and long for. It is about the transformative power of this desire, and its continual disruption and reinvention of the known world.”

The exhibition’s title, “The Plain of Heaven”, adapted from a painting by British artist John Martin (1789 – 1854), refers to the idea of an elevated, sublime environment that lies just beyond our reach, yet is firmly planted in our aspirations and imagination

Exactly six years after Odin invited Leslie to the Plain of Heaven, he proposed, while standing on the High Line – now rebuilt into a beautiful park.

The quotes above are taken from an essay written about the exhibition, which can be read in entirety here.  Coincidentally about a year after visiting this exhibit, Leslie went on to work for the Design Trust, the organization responsible for making the transformation of the High Line possible.