There are still many things that Peter Cooke would like to try his hand at--paper-making and feather-work are on his list. For the moment though, he will stick to the skill that he has been delighted to perfect over the past ten years: making delicate and unusual objects out of shells.
“Tell me if I am boring you,” he says, as he leads me round his apartment showing me his work. There is a fine line between being a bore and being an enthusiast, but Cooke need not worry: he fits into the latter category, helped both by his charm and by the beauty of the things he makes.
He points to a pair of shell-covered ornaments (装饰品) above a fireplace. “I shan’t be at all bothered if people don’t buy them because I have got so used to them, and to me they’re adorable. I never meant to sell my work commercially. Some friends came to see me about five years ago and said, ‘You must have an exhibition--people ought to see these. We’ll talk to a man who owns an art gallery’”. The result was an exhibition in London, at which 70 per cent of the objects were sold. His second exhibition opened at the gallery yesterday. Considering the enormous prices that the pieces command—around $2,000 for the ornament—an empty space above the fireplace would seem a small sacrifice for Cooke to make.
There are 86 pieces in the exhibition, with prices starting at £225 for a shell--flower in a crystal vase. Cooke insists that he has nothing to do with the prices and is cheerily open about their level: he claims there is nobody else in the world who produces work like his, and, as the gallery-owner told him, “Well, you’re going to stop one day and everybody will want your pieces because there won’t be any more.”
Cooke has created his own method and uses materials as and when he finds them. He uses the cardboard sent back with laundered shirts for his flower bases, a nameless glue bought from a sail-maker (‘If it runs out, I don’t know what I will do!’) and washing-up liquid to wash the shells. “I have an idea of what I want to do and it just does itself,” he says of his working method, yet the attention to detail, colour gradations and symmetry (对称) he achieves look far from accidental.
【小题1】What can be learned about Peter Cooke from the first paragraph?| A．He has produced objects with different materials. |
| B．He was praised for his shell objects many years ago. |
| C．He hopes to work with other materials in the future. |
| D．He has written about his love for shell objects. |
| A．is attracted by Cooke’s personality |
| B．realizes he finds Cooke’s work boring |
| C．feels uncertain about giving Cooke his opinion |
| D．senses that Cooke wants his products to be admired |
| A．the loss of Cooke’s ornaments |
| B．the display of Cooke’s ornaments |
| C．the cost of keeping Cooke’s ornaments |
| D．the space required to store Cooke’s ornaments |
| A．is unaware of the unique quality his work has |
| B．accepts that he sometimes makes mistakes |
| C．undervalues the materials that he uses |
| D．underrates his creative contribution |
