I Fought THE FIRE

 Mother's Day Post - I Fought THE FIRE

For Mother's Day I celebrate my mother's strength.  

My vision of Arta out fighting the fire.

A few years ago, there was a forest fire in the woods surrounding Arta's Secwepemc territory home (Shuswap Lake).  Arta was talking about it yesterday morning as we started our Mother's Day celebration.  I created this collage based on some of the things she told me.  Thank you Duncan Carter-Johnson for your added touches.

Pilling firefighters the morning after the big fire.  I love their soot covered arms, and the curious flag in Moiya's right hand.  Try to find it in the collage above

I don't know many people who in their 70's would go out into the woods to fight a fire.   Her courage and determination, along with the other family members who helped, likely saved all their homes.  You know who you are Glen, Rebecca, Moiya, David, Kelvin, Conner and friend.

Here is my vision of the lousy t-shirt that the rest of us got from their collective efforts.

It is impossible to capture in a single "lousy t-shirt" image the memories and connection that I feel to this place and these people.  

What are your favourite Shuswap Lake memories?  What would you put on your t-shirt that could capture how you feel about this shared space?  I'd love to hear more in the comments below.

Tufting in Our Time

Simone Saunders,
“Eve”, hand-tufted textile,
2020. Courtesy the artist.

When I worked at the University Library and the Nickle would have gallery walks and talks, 

I always made sure I could get over there.  Afterall, it was just lunch hour and often the talks were British Museum talk quality.

On seeing a talk on tufting today, I made sure to get there virtually.

The artist graduated from the UofA in acting, and then went to the Obsidian Theatre Company in central Canada for 10 years, acting, directing and doing stage design.  Now she has graduated from ACAD and her work was shown in their Student Exhibition.

Here is her website:  www.simoneelizbeth.ca

She uses tufting tools and her punch gun.  Her wooden frame is 70" x 70", so some of her work is about 65" x 65" if you want to get an idea of the size of her tufting.  Often tufting is done for rugs, but her work is to be hung on the walls

The hour of listening to her describe her art reminded me again of how much I like to go to the Nickle.  I think I will go to watch some of the previous talks from there which are now up on youtube.  

I have been missing that part of my life -- I was reminded by one of the people in the question and answer period that art is not an object, but an experience.

Arta

Can Adults Use Crayons

In the 1990’s, I took classes with Barbara Crow, an amazing University of Calgary Women’s Studies Professor. She had a profound effect on my life, not so much by the academic material she presented, but by sharing vignettes about her life, even when  she was marking exams and papers.

Once I wrote an essay that had to do with the radical feminists who agitated for universal child care during the 1960’s. I started the essay by saying that I have always loved children, letting them take me in directions I might not always want to go, many times into a pet shop, as my Mary did with me. When I got the essay back, in the margins this paragraph had a side bracket beside it and written there were the words and punctuation, "Me too!  I like to hold a child's hand".  I was pleased to see that my experience with a child was fine to use as an entry point into an academic essay.

Another class I took with her was "Images of Men and Women in Popular Culture".  One of the assignments was looking at these images in magazines along with the rest of the class, and I could see that images are a whole other language. We had to take the same image and tell what someone might say about the image who was a marxist, a communist, a liberal, a conservative, a feminist – just about any ideology.  She made us think about how to see  the same images through different lenses.

She had a child whose dad was an artist. In class, when we were talking about fluency in different languages, French and English, for example, she said that from her partner she had learned that there was another language, the language of colour and brush stroke. Just as important.  I have been thinking about that language ever since, and especially since going to zoomChurch with the Jarvis family – the day that there was paper and many kinds of felts, pens and pencils on the table.

my scissors, ruler and felts
.... heaven forbid that I should use them ...
I believe these are intended to be saved for good.

Some writing could be done in a thought bubble on that page, but nothing was a given.

People sketched, doodled, wrote down lists, added to images already there, and when the zoomChurch was finished Catherine gathered up all of the papers to put them in a large scrapbook – one started long before Covid lock-down started.  I emailed her my contribution.

I had purchased that book the year before when the Come Follow Me manual had a plethora of ideas for families – inviting them to try non-traditional forms of learning.

So now, a year later, the 18” x 24 “ Dollar Store book was still in periodic use in Montreal, just a scrapbook keeping ideas in one places – lots of ideas, different ideas, traditional ideas, non-traditional ideas, colourful ideas, some glue, tape and scissors.

 Is it OK to take some felts and use them on a piece of paper, rather than use that space for traditional script? I mean, really OK. Having the same value as a fountain pen on vellum paper? And if so, who is doing this language, and how is it turning out? I don't know what to name it.  Does anyone call it journaling? Call it going to zoomChurch? Call it art for the kitchen wall? Call it academic?  Call it pure religion?

Well, I can hardly wait to see what zoomChurch is like tomorrow and how far people are allowing themselves to think outside of our traditional forms, at least into the house where I zoom in.  So far I judge them at 100% for pushing back traditional boundaries.  Everywhere I shake my head and think, I wouldn't have gone this far!

Can adults use line and colour and feel as though they have practised a religious ritual?

I know the answer for me.

I can't do it yet.

Hoping .... hoping ....

Arta

A Seat at the Table: a multi-media exploration of food sovereignty, security and sustainability

Opening remarks by Tracey Kutschker, Curator.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

Bonnie suggested that we go the opening of the show at the Salmon Arm Art Gallery on Friday evening: paintings, tapestries, mobiles, cedar baskets, local artists, snacks, drinks, live music, and conversation with fellow Shuswapians.

I like to do a quick sweep of what there is to see and then I go back and study the information on the museum labels in detail.

Tracey Kutschker, the curator of the show, gave some opening remarks.

Sara Wiens painting, "Agricultural Grid Near Mortlach, SK.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

She drew attention to the label which introduced the show, and was high above the door.

It was a quote from Louis Thomas, Secwepemc Knowledge Keeper: “The plants spoke to me and said they were going away because the people don’t need them anymore”.

Some of the show is plant based.

The colours in the tapestries come from onions, cabbage, bark, thimble and salmon berries.

Many of the paintings are plant based, the one by Sara Wiens about land in Saskatchewan where she grew up: first indigenous land, then farmers, then industrial farms.

She has called the painting, “Agricultural Grid Near Mortlach, SK”.

Examples of birch bark and cedar root baskets.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

I talked to Delores Purdaby about her display of cedar baskets.

 I own one of her baskets, a much smaller one than the small, medium and large ones she had displayed.

 She was standing by a basket, talking about it, a basket that might have had an 18 inch or more diameter and she was building the sides of the basket.

“I am going to go up about four more inches on this basket,” she said.

I was interested in the tools in the basket.

Two of them were examples of bone sharpened to a point which she pushes through the weaving to allow her to thread more product through the small openings between the roots or threads.

“You know, some women say they don’t like their mother-in-laws but I just loved mine.

This basket is adorned with cherry bark diamonds.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

 She showed me everything I know about cedar baskets. I just loved her,” she told me.

I had gathered some information about basket weaving from the wall label. A red diamond design is a signature that a basket might have been woven by Dolores.

Gallery labels found on the wall beside an installation are typically 100-200 words – well chosen words where something I might not have known is printed.

 For example, there are only 2 weeks in June when the cedar will give up its bark without killing the tree.

Dolores had two kinds of baskets on display: those where the basket is made from a whole sheet of bark, and those where the basket is woven from roots.

She had examples of baskets for gathering berries (individual and then the baskets where all of the berries were kept), and baskets for carrying articles.

Example of the cherry bark diamond pattern, in the collection of Arta Johnson.
Photo Credit:  Bonnie W Johnson

She told me she had recently woven a basket to put a new baby in, but that basket has made its way to Quebec for a newborn there.

The Secwepemc Summer Gathering in Esketemc - that is where Bonnie bought the basket that she gifted to me. The price was $200.

 Bonnie only had $199 in her wallet.

 She did have a bag of candy with her that she had just purchased from another stall, and hid away for a late night snack.

A trade was made.

Dolores ended up with cash and a bag of candy and Bonnie with this cedar basket.

Examples of tools used for weaving.
Photo Credit:  Bonnie W Johnson.

I looked at the painting by David Wilson Sookinakin called “Bitterroot Harvest” trying to make sense of it.

 I have been reading the traditional tales of the Secwepemc people, as gathered by James Teit.

So I was looking for something about coyote, but this is a painting about the Okanagan people and their four food chiefs.

Community Collaboration, lead artist Susan Miller.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

The label said that there are four chiefs: “the black bear is chief of all the four legged ones, spring salmon is chief of all fish, Saskatoon berry is the chief of all berries and the bitterroot is chief of all roots.”

This is one of the places in the show where I wish I could have listened to the artist talk about the painting.

One of Bonnie’s colleagues, a student from Victoria, was at the opening.

We gathered around the painting and since I had taken a look previously I began.

“Well, I see coyote in a number of places in the painting?” 

She asked, “If that is coyote, why is he wearing antlers?”

Sarah Hope with her painting "A Place for the Pollinators."
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

O.K. That is the first good reason to gather around a painting with someone who has different eyes.

Bonnie seemed to intuit that this piece was one of four – information she said she gathered from the label.

I read the same label but came away trying to find all of that information in the one painting.

If she is right, it will be a fantastic gallery opening when the other 3 pictures are shown in association with this one.


And that is why going to a museum opening with a bunch of friends can be a really great evening.

What is not to like about conversation with artists, conversation with friends, and conversation about Indigenous art that lingers long after the evening is over.

Louis Thomas quote behind us on the wall.
Photo Credits: Kate Fagervik

The show ran June 8 to August 3, 2019.

Arta

The Art Gallery in Salmon Arm

Salmon Arm Art Gallery Presents

Do you ever wonder what is going on out in Salmon Arm when you aren't there?

Well, here is a cool exhibition at the Art Gallery.

David and his friend have already made the visit there.

I asked Duncan when he is coming out to BC this year.

He says for one thing, he doesn't want to miss the Roots and Blues Festival.

Well, nobody wants to miss that.

Arta

Cummings Card

Rebecca told me that her friend, Marion Cumming, had invited us to come for tea on Sunday – and bring our art work, since that is how Marion sometimes spends her Sunday afternoons – doing artwork with friends.

She said there would be lots of paper, collage materials, coloured pencils and pens and so we should just bring us. Rebecca is in the middle of her sketching classes, so she brought along her own sketch book.

Card by Marian Cummings

See the deer (left side,) bounding down
over the rock walls in her garden?

This week’s homework for Wednesday is to draw the heads of ten people and that task isn’t finished.

The drive there was beautiful – down to Oak Bay and then up the hill to Marion’s place.

When we got out of the car I could see that her home was built on a steep slope, the hills held back with beautiful stone hedges, and there was a deer standing on the law, playing down the hill at the foot of the driveway.

Marion has some beautiful card stock on which she has drawn another moment when she saw deer bounding down the hill.

A lovely afternoon doing artwork and thinking about the miracle of those who can transfer the beauty they see to paper!  Oh yes, there was also trifle, almond ice-cream, brownies and tamari-roasted almonds, plus an exotic blends of local leaves into tea.

Oh yes to doing artwork Sunday afternoons.

Here is a link to an article on Marion, and another to a link of her giving a talk about the decision she and her husband made to pass their property back to First Nations people when they pa

Arta

Family Art Classes

LtoR: Arta, Rebecca, Duncan

... doing art homework ...

We are just so lucky in this family to  have Rebecca and Duncan doing an art class.  

When it is homework time, whether you are a participant in the basic class or not, all are invited to bring out a pencil and to practise.  

Rebecca is getting really good.  

Duncan practises about 1/2 as much and he is trying to get all of the figures drawn for tonight's class.  And he is so much better at doing this than when he began, that even he is surprised.

I can pull out paper and work along side them and listen to the you tube lessons on how to draw eyes or noses.  And I can take selfies of all of us doing this.

What has changed in me is that I am observing faces in a way that I have never done before.  I am looking at all of the planes of the nose on a man that I noticed as we are walking in the crosswalk together.  I feel sorry when we have reached the other side of the street and part ways.  That was an interesting nose.

I studied the eyes of a teen-ager while I was on the bus and I can do this because I am behind dark sun-glasses and no one knows that I am intent on figuring out how to draw lines and shapes that others will recognize.

I like the thought of pursuing this hobby.

Arta

The Drawing Class

Rebecca and Duncan are taking a drawing class.

She told me of the sign up the first week I arrived, but it hadn’t started yet.

She even suggested I sign up as well.

Hard to know when to stop signing up and instead just keep on, keeping on.

I chose the latter.

Still I had all of the excitement of going to the art store and buying the pencils, charcoal, erasers and pads of paper that were on the list of supplies.

 Then Rebecca added the art folder to carry the work in and decided against buying an easel.

Rebecca knows where she can borrow one and before she gets too excited about buying supplies they are going to see how that first 6 weeks of drawing goes.

Last night I could hardly wait until they got home to see their work, which they were happy to pull out and show.

The best part was the one-liners that Duncan brought home with him.

There are mostly retired people in the class. There is a smattering of young adults and then him, the 17 year old.

Duncan said, “It is not often an old man whom you don’t know can come to you and show you a site on the internet of nude females, and the conversation is totally appropriate.”

Oh that kid is funny!

Arta

Exibition at the Tate - Zeid

Photo: from Goggle Doodle, Jan 7 2019

If you click on the Google Doodle today, Jan 7th, you will go to some of the paintings on display at the Tate of Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid's paintings. 

There are further videos. 

I watched on 8 minute one of people talking about her in her homeland, etc.

So privileged, to sit here at my computer and get to see that today.

If time permits, I am going to spend more time looking at the accompanying video's and texts out there.  This is almost as good as seeing the exhibition at the Tate.

Arta

More on Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent

On Rebecca's suggestion, I took the chance to see the film, Loving Vincent.  

I was really looking at the Cineplex Forum Website for the time of the Met production of The Extinguishing Angel when I saw that there were 3 performances of Loving Vincent, and one of them at a time when Catie and I could attend.

Having a house that is a ten minute walk from the Metro is a bonus in Montreal.  In less than 1/2 an hour we can be to the theatre, have our tickets purchased and be sitting in our seats.

I spent the evening googling Vincent van Gogh, his life, his painting and I also went looking for more about the making of this movie. 

The whole Jarvis family visited Auvers sur Oise this summer, so Catie was more familiar with the landscape than I.

If  you  are interested in six minutes about this film, click on this utube short.

Rebecca reminded me that in Paris we saw an exhibition that was built around Van Gogh's madness.  

When I was in Amsterdam with Zoe we spent a whole day in the Van Gogh Museum.

Still, I haven't seen enough.

Arta

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

Learning by Doing

Rebecca and I spent a lovely evening – a wonderful day, actually, but the morning had been filled with hard work. 

She has some articles to finish, a few ideas she wants to begin and some classes to teach.

All require preparation of one sort or another and I have been typing for her. My goal is to see if she can talk while I do 9 single spaced pages of typing. She thinks that my font is small or my margins too narrow when it feels like the pages aren’t going fast enough. But no, I quietly type, and let spell check and grammar check do their work when my fingers can’t keep up with her words.

By the end of the night we were both tired – wanting to press on, but neither of us could find energy to work at the speed we had been operating during the morning and afternoon hours. I opened one of her new art books and she opened another. We took out some paper and coloured pens and tried to re-create the images in the book. We chatted -- and let our pens work. I became more and more engaged in creative work that I don’t usually do. Art. I do go to museums and read art books, but I never pick up a pencil and try to imitate life with lines. Examples of bird’s ears and eyes, animal teeth, fur, fish scales – though it seems obvious I had never been able to tell which of the animals was a beaver until I saw how those two front teeth were drawn.

Part of the evening was that I didn’t have a pace that I had to keep, nor anyone making comments or even watching. I worked and reworked images through the evening hours, commenting to Rebecca how restful the time felt.

Duncan did come by and watching us, picked up a pen himself.

He didn’t sit down but kneeling by the table he quickly crafted a porpoise, Northwest Coast Style.

And then he returned to his electronic games. I was left seeing his image – deftly crafted with more skill than I had shown.

A beginner’s start for me … and Rebecca had purchased three books, so there is plenty of material for me to work from.

Wyona told me she has been watching u-tube videos on how to paint with water colours. She comments that there is so much on utube for a person to learn. I feel the same way about the lovely books – so many evenings ahead for me to enjoy.

Arta

Wyona Paints the Shuswap

Many years ago Wyona took Chinese paint brushing lessons and practiced a great deal.  She has picked up a paint brush again and while at Shuswap Lake created these stunning water colour paintings.

Several cousins, aunts and uncles have requested copies of the cabin pictures.  Pricing is still being decided.  :)

Views of the Shuswap from the Bates' cabin.

A stunning copy of a peek-a-boo view of the Shuswap.

Greg picked wild flowers for Wyona and she painted them.  I believe Glen was able to name every flower and berry.  Which ones do you recognize?

The most recent painting of the loud cabin as it looks now including the moss on the roof and the small tree growing through the porch.

Keep painting Wyona and creating beautiful works of art!

- Tonia

Final Art Project on New Year's Day

 

January 1, 2014
Clone in Defensive Stance
by David Camps-Johnson

This Clone drawing was David's last project on New Year's Day.

He selected the image and completed drawing it free-hand at the Bjorgan house during the art party.

Marla and I had gone shopping in Kelowna a month before. We had looked for projects that involved putting pencil to paper and included David's interests. These became known as the "mystery gifts" (so we could build up some excitement around them).

One of the "mystery gifts" was a book called Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars by the editors of Klutz and Bonnie Burton.

As you can see from the image to the right, it included a pencil crayon that looks like a double-sided light saber. It is is red at one end and blue at the other.

The back of the book shows an example of the 4-step process.

What he really liked is that you do early steps in pencil, then use a felt-pen to go over the finished project, and then erase all the early pencil draft marks.

What I really like is that he had fun and was motivated to keep a pencil or felt in his hand for an extended period of time.

The book provided him with a four step process for drawing clones. It's amazing how breaking a task into smaller parts can keep a person motivated to keep going. David's persistence was bewildering and inspiring.

Stuart McLean, Canadian Flag, 1928 Olympics

Welcome Home: Travels in Smalltown Canada by Stuart McLean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Twenty years later this book is still a relevant piece of Canadian literature reflecting on the lives of those individuals who live in rural communities.  Working hard to survive and communities these people share with McLean what they love about living in small towns, what endures them to their community members, and the various ways in which they are attempting to survive together as urbanization increases and their rural populations decrease.  From a hockey town in Manitoba, to the historic town of Maple Creek, to the far reaches of a bay town of Sackville, the reader is taken on a soft and melodious journey through the eyes of those who live and work in rural communities.  I wonder if he has written an updated version.  I think McLean should.

The most interesting part for me was the meeting McLean secured with the person who created the Canadian flag, George Stanley living in Sackville, New Brunswick.  He was asked to create a version of a potential flag by a member of parliament as he had strong interests in history and heraldry (a means of identification, usually focused on country or familial commitment).  He based his single maple leaf design on outfits Olympians wore during the 1928 Olympics, the games my grandfather Doral Pilling and his room mate Percy Williams both competed in.  "One of the images I have carried with me all my life is a photograph I saw when I was a boy.  It was a picture form the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam of Percy Williams breasting the tape and winning a gold medal for Canada.  He was wearing a white jersey with a red maple leaf on his chest.  It's an image that has always struck with me."  Recently a book was written about Percy Williams by Samuel Hawley titled, I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World's Fastest Human (http://www.amazon.ca/Just-Ran-William...).  Another book to read especially since the author consulted with my Aunt Arta Johnson who was instrumental in documenting her father's, Doral Pilling's, oral history which included stories about the 1928 Olympics and the athletic tours he participated in as the team returned to Canada.  I also have two cousins who have taken this maple leaf motif from their Olympic uniforms and had tattoos made from them.  Family stories and choices coming full circle.  Thank you McLean for shedding more light on a family story of which I was unaware.


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Art Sticker Book

Art Sticker Book

Rebecca purchased an Art Sticker Book at the National Gallery. I have been using it while she was gone, as a way for Duncan to earn money. All he has to do is put the stickers on the right page, memorize five of the painting on that page, and he earns five pounds.

One page in the book was titled "Colour" and what the paintings had in common is that the artists used bold splashes of colour to brighten up the painting. The  pages included the following titles: "Bathers at Amieres (Seurat)", "Cacchus and Ariadne (Titian)", "Harvest: Le Pouldu (Gaugin)", "Ophelia Among the Flowers (Seurat)" and "The Skiff (Renoir)". 

So far Duncan is up to 17 pounds, since after the first 3 pages, the price for identifying the paintings dropped from 5 pounds a page to 2 pounds a page.

Rebecca was remembering the past at our house, not in terms of making money, but she was thinking about a game we used to play that is now out of print. The board game was called Masterpiece. In the game you were at an art auction and you bought and sold masterpieces.  As a side event to the game, she learned many of the names of the famous paintings she is now seeing in the National Gallery.

With some nostalgia, she went out to Google to see if anyone was selling their old game.  She put a bid in on one of them.

I think she should just go down to the National Gallery and enjoy them on the wall.

Arta

after the fact... London with Arta

After the better part of a week spent in London hounding the streets for a home to rent for the year, I was left with one free day to spend with Arta. The three of us headed off to Leicester Square, to the half-price booth to get theatre tickets for the last night. The plan was to head in different directions: Arta wanted to see "Love Never Dies" again, and Wyona wanted to spend her last night with "Dreamboats and Petticoats".

Ten minutes before hitting the Tube station, we'd had a long talk about how to meet up with each other if we got separated... the easy answer is of course just to look back for Rebecca's hair. :-) In a moment of irony, the two women went through ahead of me, and my Oyster card ("bus pass") denied me entry (I had run out of money and hadn't noticed).... the line up to re-nourish my depleted Oyster card was long, and the women were gone...Arta, though, in typical Arta way, had decided for fun to see how easy it was to find me, and had noticed I was gone. They came back, spoke to me through the barricade, and we sent Wyona ahead to wait in the ticket line up while I lined up for the Oyster card. Nice start to the day... way to practice finding each other after getting lost.

Just proving that different paths do not always run at the same speed, Arta and I somehow still managed to arrive at the Leicester Square before Wyona.

Go figure.

So... tickets purchased, we split up for the day: Wyona to visit her favourite scarf sellers (What?! More scarves?!), and Arta and I to visit the National Gallery.

One of the recent 'installations' at the national gallery is the "Eco Art" outside. VERY westcoast!

They have planted grasses and small mossy growing things all over one of the walls of the building.

Not sure how visible it is in the shot, but the effect from some ways back is a bit like a Georges Seurat painting... it just looks like a lovely watercolour painting. Pretty groovy!

Arta and I have not spent much time in museums TOGETHER (as adults, that is... i certainly spent time following in her path of educational exploration as a child...you know, "fossil rock walks in downtown Calgary", "identify bat guano in fish creek park", etc).

But it was a revelation to see that she is just as bad as me in her desire to consume til your belly/brain explodes.

In between our own wanderings, we took in the 10:30 and 2:30 guided tours, each of which offered a more close exploration of 5 or maybe 6 paintings.

Christ Healing the Blind Man by Buoninsegna

We started out looking at some panels from an alter piece done by Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255-1260 – c. 1318-1319), the most influential Italian artist of his time.

The first one we saw has Christ healing the blind man.

It is fun to look at the conventions for telling story through image: here, you see the blind man both before and after being healed.

The panel that goes beside this one has Christ appearing to the apostles.... when they are set along side each other, you can see that the "healed" blind man is looking up at the body of Christ in the panel along side.

Fun.

We also learned that this was painted on wood, which was then covered with linen, and then covered with plaster to make a smooth surface to paint on. The paint was egg tempera, which would give you vibrant colours, albeit without tons of nuance: the paint would dry very fast, so you only had a short time where it could be pliably worked).

Annunciation of Mary

In the afternoon session, we returned to Duccio, to look at another painting of the Annunciation (Mary getting informed by the angel that she was going to have a baby....).

We listened to a nice discussion about the number of people who would have participated in making the painting.

Different artists in the studio would have done the people, and the buildings (would would have had painters specializing in buildings)

Then we moved up a hundred years, to spend time with the Spanish Bartolomé

St. Michael Triumphs Over the Devil

Bermejo's 1468 painting "St Michael triumphs over the devil" . This one is in oil, which explains the greater nuance and emotion captured in the paint. We also learned more about just how much gold leaf there was on the original. First there was a 'cartoon' of the painting... like a paper version laid over top of the prepared canvas. then someone would poke holes through it onto the prepared canvas below, so that the outline of the painting was transferred there. Then the gold specialist would be next, and would cover certain part of the painting with a red glue, over which was laid tiny pieces of gold flake. The gold would then be further pressed it into the wood with some kind of embossing tool, so that the painting would be even more luminescent when seen in the candlelight of the darkened church. Only after all the gold pieces were laid down would the artist come into to paint the figures and images in the scene. When you look at it now, there is not so much gold, and the background looks reddish... that is just the red glue stuff (which had some special name i have forgotten) showing through. If you click on this link, so will get the picture on the national gallery's website, and can zoom in to get a closeup of the monster! The feminist in me was so happy that the guide did eventually take us to a painting by a woman artist! Here were looked at a painting by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755 - 1842). This is a self-portrait of her, but she is also showing off her skills as a painter by making hers a version of a similar painting by Rubens, on the right of the gallery and which you can see beside her in this post. What she was doing here was making a 'calling card'.

Self Portrait of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

She is showing herself AS an artist, showing off all the skills she has, letting male viewers know that she can make their wives look this good but that they needn't worry about leaving their wife alone with her. I also like how she is holding her hand out, encouraging them to give her a commission! There was more, but I am getting tired. :-) which was just what happened to us too! So.... in between the two guided tours, we went for a "Talk and Draw" session. Here, they set up 40 chairs in front of one painting.

Artist: John Constable

In this case, the painting was John Constable's "Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Someone talks to you about the painting for 20 minutes, then they give you two drawing tasks, to practice some of the techniques that were used in the drawing. They hand out these nice big easels for you lap, boxes of pastels, pencils, conté, etc. So we had two tasks. First to draw a single tree from the painting by building up layers of colour (ie. start with black, go over with red, with brown, yellow, etc). Second task was to show perspective in the same way (ie. capture the darkening woods in the distance). I will confess, we both had to come to terms with some of our limits! hahaha. And yet, it was totally fun, so sit, listen, draw, and laugh. At the end, they had people set their drawings at the front to compare what people had produced. We also then had to head to the bathroom to wash the evidence of our crimes from our fingers (stained by the pastels). I felt very much like Lady MacBeth! We did bring our drawings home and showed them to Wyona at the end of the night. I will not be more specific re which of the drawings below belongs to Arta and which belongs to me... but I think Wyona was arguing that one of the paintings looks less like 'the woods', and more like a Judy Chicago plate! You can see that neither of those two women was taking my artist production very seriously.

Artists.

They are never appreciated while still alive...

Geometric Mechanotherapy



Geometric Mechantherapy
Image from National Gallery Website

 Of the 50 items on display at the Gallery's It is what it is  exhibit, this might have been my least favorite: Steven Shearer's Geometric Mechanotherapy.

I wouldn't have said anything about it, but Mary put Vernissage: The Magazine of the National Gallery of Canada into my hands tonight, for the magazine comes with a family yearly subscription to the Gallery.

I was reading that this piece was selected by a national jury to ge shown at the Venic Biennale, the most prestigious contemporary art event in the world.

Sounds keep coming from the pipes. That was the piece about the work that I didn't like, because when I was in the room looking at the other art installations there, I was always aware of the gurgling, eruptive, flushing, wheezing sounds coming from Shearer's work.

No accounting for taste.

On this point, it is me who is not keeping up.

Arta

It Is What It Is

Straw Man
Valier Blass in 2010 Contemporary Canadian Art Exhibiton

In the past couple of years I have heard people use the phrase, it is what it is, but I didn’t know its exact meaning.


I looked at the Urban Dictionary today which gives this meaning: A phrase that seems to simply state the obvious but actually means "it will be what it is," as in "it ain't gonna change, so deal with it or don't." 

Maybe I  didn’t really have to look that up. 

Still, that phrase is the title of the 2010 Canadian Exhibition of Acquisitions of New Canadian Art: IT IS WHAT IT IS.

I put on my audio guide and listened to the explanations of all 50 of the exhibition pieces – the first one of which is seen in the foyer, before entering the exhibition.  Valerie Blass’s “Straw Man” pretty well, is what it is. 

That is, at least it was what it was until I went to take a copy of the picture from the exhibition website and discovered that the foot of Straw Man  is resting on someone’s head – so it is what it isn’t wasn’t what it was when I saw it yesterday in a darkened space and didn’t notice the footstool is really a bust of an Egyptian.  I walked by that installation 3 times and circled it twice besides, and still didn't notice the footstool.

Whoops.  A political hot potato today.


If I were picking out the highlights from the exhibit, I wouldn’t have picked either of the ones chosen for the website for this event. The first installation is made of pipes, is more than 10 feet tall and 10 feet across and has construction and gurgling sounds coming out of it, which ruined the effect of the other pieces in the room for me ... but it is what it is.


The neon sign that says IT IS WHAT IT IS and IT WAS WHAT IT WAS wasn’t even a place where I rested my eyes and tried to make sense of the contemporary art.  I did see it. 


“Odd,” I thought, “that they have the exhibition title in neon lights”, not knowing that the piece itself is an installation.


All I have proved by writing today is that I need a docent to lead me around the museum, because I am not getting it on my own.  Or if I am getting some of it, I am not getting all of it.


Arta

Docent's Choice



Fancis Loring
by Florence Wyle

 March 3, 2011

Yesterday was National Gallery Day for me. The new exhibit, “It is What it Is”, drew me there. But the gallery brochure also promised two Gallery Talk, ten-minutes each, one at 11:15 and one at 12:15.

The first lecture was in front of two busts of female sculpturors whose names I did not know: Wyle and Loring.

Elspeth Cameron has written a book about them entitled And Beauty Answers: The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle (2007).  There is a book for children about them:  The Clay Ladys.

They used each other for models, so the sculpture of Frances Loring is done by Florence Wyle, and then Forence’s by Francis.

Florence Wyle
by Fracis Loring

The challenge for me was to keep straight that the artistic impulse of one is what seemingly captures the soul of the other.

The docent said that he wanted to cut the lecture short, for he wanted to take us to the place in the gallery where other works by these women stand – specifically that place down by the pool.

They both sculpted during the time of the Group of Seven – but who could compete with that group, plus Picasso and Miro, so many great artists, all at the same time, such a variety in mediums.


Pan and Syrinx
Photo Credit: National Gallery Website

I don’t know my mythologies well – Greek, Norse, Roman, I should have spent more time looking at those. Pan and Syrinx by Jean-François de Troy was the picture we studied.

At the end of the talk I knew the picture, the artist, the provenance of the picture, and how it related to the picture beside which it was hung. Roccoco.

Whenever I hear the term I have to be told the definition again, and the time period. No matter. The musical allusions to Pan’s 7-reed pipe didn’t get past me and the docent situated the painting right to the time period and even to the place where it might have hung in a patron’s chamber.

I haven’t seen enough of the National Gallery nor heard enough of the docent's stories yet.

Arta