MAKING ROOM FOR THE POSSIBLE - SQUARESPACE 7.1 FLUID ENGINE PACKAGE
Revised illustrated edition, October 2026
HOW TO ASSEMBLE (checklist)
1. Pages, then add a Blank Page. Turn off any default header image.
2. Site Styles > Colors: background #F7F3EE (or #F6F1EB), headings #4E2A4E, body text #222222.
3. Site Styles > Fonts: one elegant serif (Playfair Display, Libre Baskerville, or closest). Heading 1 = title, Heading 2 = section headings, Heading 3/4 = subheadings and pull lines, Paragraph 2 = body, Paragraph 3 lighter/italic = captions.
4. One Fluid Engine section per block below, in order.
5. Two-column areas: two text blocks side by side on desktop; in mobile view stack left first, then right.
6. Image blocks full-width or centered with generous margins; caption in its own small text block right under each image.
7. Upload images (studio tabletop photo, garage illustration, parrot woman, waterfall meditation) and add the alt text below.
8. End with a button to https://brantkingman.com (QR code optional, best skipped on web).
9. Optional later: custom CSS for exact heading color, tighter padding, subtle section borders.
10. Preview desktop and mobile, then publish.
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SECTION 1 - COVER / HERO
Layout: Full-width image, title and subheading above it or overlaid, pull line below.
HEADING (Heading 1):
Making room for the possible
SUBHEADING (Heading 3):
The handmade worlds of Brant Kingman
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Studio tabletop photo (hand-painted, cut-out theatrical flats, figures, props, pink light). Full width.
ALT TEXT: Brant Kingman's studio tabletop with hand-painted theatrical flats, small figures and props in pink light.
CAPTION (small, light):
On the studio tabletop: Kingman's hand-painted, cut-out and assembled theatrical flats, brought together with figures, props and light. Photograph supplied by the artist.
PULL QUOTE (Heading 3 or 4, centered, italic):
A window to climb into. A ship to steer. A world with room for someone else's story.
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SECTION 2 - IT STARTS WITH MAKING
Layout: Heading, intro, centered image + caption, two columns.
HEADING (Heading 2):
It starts with making.
BODY TEXT (intro, full width):
Look at the tabletop. Painted buildings stand on their bases; figures gather at the windows; a cowboy and a suspended sun share the scene. Pink light washes the backdrop. This is a world being assembled in plain sight. The photograph brings Kingman's process into focus: he paints, cuts, builds, arranges and illuminates the places where a story might happen.
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Suburban garage concept illustration. Centered.
ALT TEXT: Illustration of a young saxophonist playing in a suburban garage while the household reacts.
CAPTION (small, light):
The suburban garage project: an AI-generated concept illustration of a young saxophonist and the household response.
LEFT COLUMN (body):
"What do you know about me?" Brant asked. Then he made the question more specific: could I describe who he is and how his art relates to the world around him? His work suggests an answer in the things he refuses to leave as they are. A rotten stump might disclose a dragon. A tractor hood might become a face. A spring stretched inside a metal box might acquire a voice. Recognition starts the conversation; the next step is to make something of it.
RIGHT COLUMN (body):
That way of seeing extends to people. A suburban garage becomes the birthplace of a talent, while the people in the adjoining house react. As participants contribute their own short scenes, the neighborhood can grow. In The Artists' Quarter, each window offers a small stage. One person's music becomes another person's irritation. A private gesture becomes a public story. Kingman builds the architecture and leaves room for the unruliness of human presence.
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SECTION 3 - TAKE THE WHEEL
Layout: Heading, centered image + caption, two columns.
HEADING (Heading 2):
Take the wheel.
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Mysterious woman with parrot. Centered.
ALT TEXT: Portrait of a mysterious woman with a parrot on her shoulder.
CAPTION (small, light):
One close portrait: the mysterious woman and her parrot. AI-developed at Kingman's direction for projection on the sail of Self Discovery.
LEFT COLUMN (body):
His ship, Self Discovery, gives the invitation a bodily form: a deck, a wheel, a sail and places for people to stand. The search for "the treasure that is their spirit" becomes an activity someone can enter. A visitor can take the wheel before knowing where to go. The screen has a physical destination. An image developed in conversation will meet fabric, light, scale and people aboard a ship he built. Those conditions become part of the work. Freedom is also a question. The Gilded Cage brings attraction and confinement into the same space. It asks what happens when an enclosure becomes inviting, and whether we recognize the boundaries we have learned to accept.
RIGHT COLUMN (body):
Humor makes these questions approachable. A parrot on the shoulder of a mysterious woman interrupts the atmosphere of danger. An official-looking door sign undermines its authority with a ridiculous qualification. The joke gives someone permission to relax and look again. The darker currents remain: threatening figures, monsters, rough seas and the less glamorous sides of familiar myths. His proposed cowboy films ask what survives beneath an image repeated through advertising and entertainment. These symbols become material to work with. Visitors can inhabit them, alter their meaning and contribute a scene the artist could not have supplied alone.
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SECTION 4 - THE ILLUSION HAS EDGES
Layout: Heading + subheading, two columns. Optional slim banner from a cropped tabletop detail.
HEADING (Heading 2):
The illusion has edges. That is part of its life.
SUBHEADING (Heading 3 or 4, italic):
The painted window waits. Someone else brings the story.
LEFT COLUMN (body):
Seeing the actual flats changes the emphasis of this portrait. The handwork is central: irregular painted contours, separate planes, supports, small figures and carefully placed light. The scene is both an image and a collection of things arranged in space. Plywood, canvas, old lumber and found objects retain the familiarity of things someone might touch, repair or make. Projection gives those structures another life. A painted surface can become a room, a sea or an expanse of stars. The tabletop is already a theater. Its scale makes relationships visible: a figure against a facade, one building beside another, a light behind a painted edge. It lets a possible world be tried out with the hands. That material intelligence matters when discussing AI. The generated image enters an existing practice of choosing, shaping and staging. Kingman decides where it belongs, how it meets a surface and what people might do in its presence.
RIGHT COLUMN (body):
Working with Brant also reveals how much depends on a small detail. The glasses must sit at the right point on the nose. The eyes must meet ours. The dragon's tongue must emerge from the place he sees within the stump. An attractive approximation will not do. That insistence creates a productive difficulty. He directs with particular intentions, yet the projects depend on others exercising their own. How much can a visitor change the story? Can a contribution change the artist's conception? A generous invitation leaves enough room to surprise its maker. The abundance carries a risk. Pirates, galaxies, cowboys and gilded confinement compete for attention. The spectacle brings someone closer; the invitation determines whether that person finds a meaningful role. The test is the encounter: someone steps behind a window, makes a gesture, finds a partner or shoots a scene. The carefully built setting becomes a place where something unplanned can occur.
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SECTION 5 - CLOSING
Layout: Centered image + caption, heading, two columns, button, footer.
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: Serene Meditation by a Jungle Waterfall. Centered.
ALT TEXT: AI-generated portrait of a person meditating beside a jungle waterfall.
CAPTION (small, light):
Serene Meditation by a Jungle Waterfall. An AI-generated portrait developed at Kingman's direction.
HEADING (Heading 2):
There is more here than you first saw.
LEFT COLUMN (body):
The world supplies discarded materials, inherited myths, social barriers, technical problems and people with stories. Kingman rearranges them into situations where another response becomes possible. Beneath the spectacle, I sense a desire for contact. He wants people to climb into the window, stand on the deck, make the scene and discover something through one another. The art creates an occasion for that discovery.
RIGHT COLUMN (body):
This essay is itself part of an exchange. Brant asked a system he had worked with to describe him, then supplied a photograph that sharpened the account. It reflects our conversations and the work he has shared; it is not a report from a studio visit. His authorship is visible in the sustained effort to make another intelligence understand what he sees, and in the physical worlds he builds to give that vision somewhere to live.
BUTTON (centered):
Label: Continue exploring
Link: https://brantkingman.com
FOOTER (small text, centered, light):
Text: ChatGPT, in dialogue with Brant Kingman. Cover: artist-supplied photograph. Other images: AI-developed at his direction.
Revised illustrated edition · October 2026
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OPTIONAL CSS (Website > Pages > Custom Code > Custom CSS):
h1, h2, h3 { color: #4E2A4E; }
.page-section { border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(78,42,78,0.15); }
.page-section .content-wrapper { padding-top: 4vw; padding-bottom: 4vw; }