Christmas Tree Art

... announcing an unusual Christmas dinner ...

Kerri Singh wrote a note, saying she was finally sharing her Christmas tree.

If you are still feeling a bit Christmas-y here is what she had to say about Covid Christmas Dinner.

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 The title of the Christmas Tree art is : COVID Christmas Dinner

As Christmas nears each year I yearn for the Christmas decorations and for a unique one of a kind tree.

Rather --  Christmas Artwork.

This year I was taking with Veer and Ron about some Ideas and Veer suggested to do something based on COVID as this is hopefully a once in a lifetime Christmas.

He mentioned masks and hand sanitizer and such.

It was fun to hear your voice and Rebecca’s for Christmas.

... black mask, red charger, silverware ...

So not too eager to have more COVID reminders right in our living room I shrugged it off and kept thinking.

And then it came to me as I thought about how different this year would be as we have been the lucky guests at Richard and Miranda’s for the last few years, so that, that was what I would do!

A COVID Christmas Dinner Tree.

It is a representation of the “same household only rule” of the missing family and friends not being able to celebrating in person all gathered together around the table.

With the empty place settings, masks, my grandmother's silverware, chargers, napkin ring holders, ornaments from India and goblets from Barnwell all having meaning and memories of 2020 and years past.

It was fun to create.

Merry Christmas to all.

Kerri

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More pictures below:

Urban Portraits

Urban Projects
can be viewed at the Loughheed House

Miranda and I went down to the Lougheed House to see Kerri Singh's Urban Projects display.

You can hear about it on this link to CBC's Homestretch, a lovely audio interview where Kerri explains what is behind some of the photos.

Miranda and I were charmed, looking at each picture alone and then joining each other to discuss what we were seeing in the images.

For a starter, we wanted to talk about the lines, the colour, the positioning of the subjects, the material objects, the family configurations, the light, the shadow, and the statement that accompanied each of the pictures.

We ended our viewing by going back for one final round, picking the picture that we would like to put up in our homes.  Miranda choose a woman who is standing by her bike.  Miranda likes the hues of brown and orange and red in the picture, how the woman's scarf ties the woman to the images in the background: the Cafe where we see its neon OPEN sign in the window, the woman's beige boots, the pole of the street light she is leaning against, even her stance is charming.

I am not sure which was the picture I wanted.  For sure the text above the "Shopping Cart Person" was imaginative and poetic. A beautiful read.

I like the abstractness of the surroundings in the artist's studio, the light on his model -- well, Kerri captured it all in more than one of the pictures.  But I kept going back to look at that one.

The more I read, the more I wanted to look back at the pictures,  I was finding a more complicated meaning in the pictures from the statements of the models.

I love reading images.  Having Miranda with me made it more fun, for she was seeing things that had passed me by.

We lingered over the picture of the woman who runs Twigs.  We read the text and then looked at the jewellery:  on her arms, her fingers, around her neck, and noticed how artfully it was placed both to the left and the right of the red-haired model.  I tried to figure out her age.  The text mentioned that she had lived through World War II, which was a good starter for my math.

Though I have lived in Calgary all of my life, I don't have a clear understanding of where the Beltline district is.  And the Beltline was mentioned often.

One of the attendants at the show brought me a map so that I could see the borders of the district to get a handle on who it was that Kerri was photographing.

On the drive home we talked about neighbourhoods, neighbours, parks, amenities and why a person might love living in the Beltline District.

A thumbs up to the Urban Portraits Project.

Thank you for letting us see the Downtown and Beltline District through your eyes, Kerri Singh.

We wanted to take some photos for the blog, but that was forbidden.  However, you can see two of the images on the CBC.ca/homestretch blog.

Check it out.

Arta

Kerri Singh on Nadiene Neilsen

At the end of the summer, Bonnie, Rebecca and I tried to sum up events of the summer that we will always remember.  Nadiene's funeral came up again and again.  I haven't blogged that yet, but I was out looking at Kerri Singh's pictures and came across this lovely letter to her grandmother.

http://www.kerrisingh.com/2014/08/a-letter-to-my-grandmother.html

Arta