Auld Lang Syne - days gone by

If you read my previous post, you know what a special experience I've had attending a "Digital Storytelling Workshop for Elders". (And if you've never visited my blog before, that's because I've deliberately kept it low-key, just counting on the trusty friends who check in from time to time and can usually be relied on to give me a 5-star rating).

Now it's time to share the results of my 10 weeks delving into new-to-me technology, internet photo banks, amazing personal connections through cyberspace -- and my own memories.

"If you start this process, continue..."  The video lasts 6 minutes and 20 seconds -- a little over our Elder group's budgetted 5 minutes, but we were given a "gift certificate" to cover the cost.  Be sure to view all the way to the end and add your applause for the contributions of those I've thanked.

Time weavers: A sisterhood

As if it were posted just for me, a small notice caught my eye at the library in early October:--"Digital Storytelling for Elders". In one of those time constraints that prevail in fairytales, I had to act fast. The start of the 8-week workshop was just two days away and luckily there was space for me to join the small group.

It has truly been a "we laughed together, we cried together" experience -- a special kind of bonding among a creative and caring group of individuals. Lately, as our videos show signs of exceeding  all expectations, I've been reminded of the "brotherhood" described in one of my bibles -- THE ART SPIRIT, the famous collection of teachings by the American artist/teacher Robert Henri. Try to overlook his early 20th century use of male nouns and pronouns and just read and inhale the spirit:--

"Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.

The Brotherhood is powerful. It has many members. They are of all places and of all times. The members do not die.... The work of the Brotherhood does not deal with surface events....No matter what may happen on the surface, the Brotherhood goes steadily on. It is the evolution of man....No matter how strong the surface institutions become, no matter what laws may be laid down... all change that is real is due to the Brotherhood."

One of our early workshop exercises revealed the bonds across time of the Sisterhood. We were asked to bring a photo or an artifact that had personal meaning to us. I brought my grandmother's sewing basket; a basket that I'm sure is older than she was.

After we placed the photos and objects on the table -- without any explanation -- each of us selected someone else's treasure and created a story about it, which we then told out loud. As soon as I'd brought out my basket, I'd noticed an immediate spark from my new friend S, who was sitting across from me.

As she'd told us in early introductions, her family was originally from India and generations back settled in Uganda. She was raised there until as a high school graduate, she won a full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin. Her family left Uganda soon afterwards during the vicious reign of Idi Amin.

S immediately claimed Granny's basket, and it could not have been in better hands. When it was time to share our storytelling efforts, she held it almost with reverence. Stroking the basket, showing everyone the top and bottom, she pointed out the top's intricate design and the perfection of the foundational weave on the bottom.

When she opened the basket, she showed how perfectly the lid fit and noted the smoothness of the interior weave.

Then she told us the true story of an artisan in her home town in  Uganda. This basketmaker was renowned for her work and was always prominent among the women who displayed their wares for sale to the tourist trade. On a day when S was passing nearby, the woman had placed one of her exceptionally fine baskets in front of all her others, with its lid placed beside it to showcase its beauty.

A group of tourists came into range, and as they came to the basket displays, one of the tourists threw a coin into the lid of the basket. My friend S noticed the slight wince of the basketmaker, whose amazing creation had been ignorantly mistaken for a beggar's bowl. This fine artist waited for the tourist group to pass, removed the coin and left it on the ground, placed the lid on the basket, and pulled her most expert creation back to the safety of its group.

"And that is what I remember as I look at this basket," she said.

Through my tears, I asked to tell the group the background of Granny's sewing basket. My grandmother's family goes centuries back in the state of South Carolina. Even today, the descendants of slaves brought to Charleston are expert basket weavers and sell their creations to the tourist trade. Typically, these "sweet grass baskets" use the local materials of sweet grass, pine needles, bulrushes, and palmetto leaves in a simple pattern.

A lidded sweet grass basket that's been in my family since the 1940's looks like this:

My grandmother's basket is much older -- I believe it's from her own mother, which would take us back to Civil War days, back to a time when the basketmaking techniques were closer to their roots.

Now, through her tears, my friend S continued my story: "Most of the slaves came from the west coast of Africa -- from my part of the continent." And then we continued almost in unison: "These basket weavers could be related -- both in actuality and in art."

We laughed together. We cried together. With joy, I'd say.

And among Robert Henri's many wise teachings is this one

"All real works of art look as though they were done in joy."

High-level bait and switch

There's a lot of funny stuff going on in Vancouver these days, with rampant development out of control. You can put me squarely in the camp of the NIMBYs, the evil "retirees living alone in big (or not so) empty houses," the people who don't recognize that change is necessary, change is good!

I'm trying, really trying, to look for the silver linings. I thought I'd found one about six weeks ago when I spotted this headline: "Oakridge collaborates with the National Gallery of Canada".   OMG -- was this possible? Oakridge is one of Vancouver's original shopping malls from the 1960s, and it occupies several square blocks of land in prime central Vancouver. That was then, this is now, when "Oakridge" with its imminent massive redevelopment has become shorthand for everything that's wrong with the way Vancouver is heading.

But now -- was the new Oakridge mall going to house a branch of Canada's National Gallery? This was big silver-lining stuff indeed.

But let's see how this astonishing collaboration has played out in the glossy posters along the Canada Line (subway). Read here how the Oakridge masterminds scoped out the National Gallery collection for a thrilling painting by....Gustave Dore (better known for his engravings).

View the painting! Zoom in on the obscure corner that Oakridge will celebrate!

And finally, see what happens when shopping mall meets masterworks:

Meanwhile, that very week, the venerable Vancouver Art Gallery (the city's art museum) was snagging the headlines with a long-awaited announcement. Now I happen to be fond of the VAG in its original location, where essential rain-screening (leak sealing!) of its underground storage space and plaza is almost complete:

Everyone knows that the gallery needs more space, and expansion plans have been debated for years. I'm on the side of the local entrepreneur and big-time philanthropist whose rallying cry was: Keep the gallery we have, put money into art not "iconic" buildings, and grow the collection into several smaller gallery spaces around town. His was the losing proposition -- which shows that it's not just grey-haired retirees in big/small empty houses who are out of touch with reality.

A new site was chosen, an international architecture firm was selected, and...ta tum..the design for the "iconic" building was recently revealed:

I'm hearing more nay's than yay's. The best comment I've read is that it looks like a stack of bento boxes.

Who knows when this meal will be served? Right now, there isn't enough money to build anything.

In a funny counterpoint, the week after the VAG foofarah, Vancouver's truly famous Mountain Equipment Co-Op announced it would relocate its flagship store to a planned building on the 2010 Olympics site. I'd say MEC's design outdoes the bentos by a long shot:

Anyway, the pseudo-art of Oakridge and the high-level shenanigans of the VAG cabal just make me want to walk away from it all.

We met at Budgie’s, remember?

My previous post marked the first stage of a project I've had in mind since my final working years. Going downtown to work had been something of a thrill in itself, and I'd quickly realized I could take my sketchbook and grab some quick sketches as the wheels on the bus went round and round. My favourite location was not far from SoMa (the so-called trendy South Main area), where the storefronts of Budgie's Burritos and East Vanity Parlour contributed to a fascinating grid of rectangles, and the sidewalks invited passersby to linger.

After finishing several studies based on some of those sketches, I set to work on my ultimate objective -- to paint a small panel that would capture the whole Budgie's streetscape. I've been going through a painting-things-over phase, and I decided that I had just the right panel (about 9" x 26") that I'd used not once, but twice before. It was first a wildly coloured pile of driftwood:

...that was then painted over for a quick study project called "Eyes of the Northwest." 

A once-over with a blue-grey wash of paint, and I was ready to begin:

At about the midpoint, I decided I'd let some of the underlying driftwood show through for a little movement.

Here's the grand finale, "Not Far from SoMa," copyright 2015.

Okay, so it's not at all grand. But I cannot tell you how thrilling it was for me to have finally accomplished this years-in-the-incubation-stage painting. All those bus rides, all those quick sketches, the recent painted studies, my enduring fascination with the human figure -- hey, maybe I'll be able to get back to life drawing classes some day.

There's also a funny thing about the dramatis personae in my painting. I mentioned before my affection for this seated "loner" figure (not to be confused with the Incredible Hulk lurking in the background):

Just as I was finishing the painting, I was sorting through some of our still unpacked books and came across a paperback of Plato's Dialogues. On its cover was a detail of Raphael's "School of Athens" with its own seated loner figure (front and centre, pale mauve tunic) that has always intrigued me.

See the connection? I knew that Raphael's scene assembles all the great Greek philosophers (half of whom you'll never have heard of), and I wondered who the loner was. This fabulous website allows you to click on each figure and learn the philosopher's identity.

My little man in mauve is Heraclitus, the guy who said, "You can't step into the same river twice" and many other nifty things. Now cast a glance diagonally to the right of Heraclitus, past the guy on the steps (nobody I know), to the figure in white robe with his back turned. That's Epicurus, and judging by his wrought gestures, he's despairing that the burritos weren't delivered on time.

East Van meets SoMa

I've written once or twice before about my pleasure in sketching as I rode the bus downtown in my last few pre-retirement years. Depending on the time and season of the year -- and whether I'd been able to grab a window seat -- I might jot down old buildings, signs and architectural details, or people on the street -- like the spotted-jacket guy above. "Jot down" is the operative expression because the bus was whizzing along, and often what I captured was just enough to stimulate a later sketch from memory.

Memory drawings or instant sketches are not just eccentricities of mine, but a time-honoured artists' practice. About observation and quick sketches, the artist Delacroix said something like, "You should be able to capture the essentials of the figure before a man who has fallen from a building hits the pavement." Luckily this scene never presented itself to me in my trips through downtown Vancouver.

One of my enduring fascinations was the last block of Kingsway, just before it merges into Main Street, the dividing line that separates what's generally called "East Vancouver" from the rest of the city. There, still planted in East Van and several blocks north of the trendy Main Street section known as SoMa (South Main) was an intriguing stretch centred on Budgie's Burritos and East Vanity Parlour, a funky clothing shop.

Over a period of weeks, months really, I'd make note of this half-block of store fronts -- the size of the windows, the placement of the doors, the clientele and passersby.

Something about the grid of rectangles and the colourful scene on the sidewalk always attracted my notice.

I'd always had the idea of making a long panel painting based on this streetscape -- why not start now, seven years later? I began with some small studies of various sizes, no larger than 8"x10" -- a good two months' work! Here's "East Vanity Parlour lives on" (sadly, the shop has gone out of business since my bus ride days) in which I played with how the placement of colour attracts the eye.

It won't be evident but I was actually learning some good stuff from this exercise, like how to pull shapes out or push them back, how to make a harmonious whole. In this next one -- "Show and Tell" -- I made many mistakes...the too prominent slats of the Adirondack chairs, the too prominent flesh of hands, legs, feet. I liked the observer in the doorway, though, and you'll see that I've cut her loose from the rest of it, planning to save her.

"Meet Me at Budgies" gave me a nice challenge with the bicycle:--

And "Three's a Crowd" brought into the action -- well, out of the action really -- a curious little isolated figure I'd noticed on the sidelines one day.

In most of these studies, I was also getting used to working with acrylic medium rather than water to dilute the paint -- for more opaque colour and "brushier" strokes. From an early morning winter bus trip, I recorded "Still Dark at 6:30 am"

And here's another dark morning scene from the "Bus Stops" series I still work on, both on paper and in my head -- "Headed Downtown."

Here in East Van, we're not without pretensions. Three blocks from us, there stood a few years ago two rather sweet little 1940s houses. First given up to renters, they retained some lovely garden plants -- a big fuchsia shrub and a never-ending rambler rose. Then they were vacated, the deadly sign appeared advising a development permit was applied for, and squatters moved in. After a "police action" that left bullet holes in the once charming octagonal windows, protective fencing went up -- and the houses soon came down. Now, in front of a deep excavation, a sign advertises a 3-storey condo building is on its way ...with the impressive (!) designation, "Kensington Point."

In that spirit, I've recorded these studies in my workbook log with the grandiose title, "The SoMa Suite." Amateurish as some of these look, they gave me some good practice, during which I often recalled the counsel of one of my virtual teachers, Mary Beth McKenzie). In A PAINTERLY APPROACH she wrote, "Much can be learned from the first steps in making a painting. A student will do well to make many starts."

Most of these quaint folks I've painted are destined to hang around in my studio for a couple of months and then be painted over for future studies. I'll close with the most successful one, "SoMa Conversation".

Poppies past, present -- future?

It's the bloomin' truth: I have hellebore friends, I have rose friends, I have cucurbit friends, I have iris friends, I have garlic friends, I have geranium friends – for goodness sake, I even have an alyssum friend (but no alyssum, thank you). Some friends share two or more categories, but each is a unique species unto herself. Like my poppy friend.

She was on my mind in early summer 2014, when the Oriental poppy we successfully transplanted from our old place produced a bumper crop of 18 flowers. It's the same plant that inspired my early painting "Poppy Fields" (copyright 2003).

Those were early days for me, long before this blog, when I'd just committed (1) to make paintings and let them live – instead of painting something new on top; and (2) to come out of hiding and show my work to others. It was among the paintings I took to a one-hour personal critique at Emily Carr. The art instructor winced at the very-red-RED, but my poppy friend loved it – and her opinion has come to mean a lot (including the occasional, "I don't really like this one.")

And so...last poppy season, I decided to make a second poppy painting with some of the same objects as in the first: the wine bottle I've never been able to throw out; the batik placemat; poppy seed pods, and a single poppy flower. Poppy Friend and I have birthdays just a week apart, and I envisioned the Beaujolais bottle with "2015" around its neck – and the title "Another Vintage Year" to celebrate A Big One for both of us.

The set-up and "production schedule" for this still life were a bit tricky. While the poppy was in flower, I used dried roses to stand in (more or less) for the seed pods that were yet to develop.

Once the pods developed, they moved into their idiosyncratic poses and I was left with ...a half-filled glass of water where the flower had faded away!

The background is an artist's in-joke, the result of a happy accident. I change my bulletin board every few months, often with reproductions that resonate with what I'm working on. This time, as I looked through my big stash for things that said "RED", I came across Georgia O'Keeffe's "Two Poppies," Monet's "The Corn Poppies" (translation for the whatever-poppies that grow wild across the fields of Europe), and Matisse's "Odalisque on an Oriental Background." I'd barely tacked them up when I saw that it would be a real kick to try to place my planned set-up against this background.

Here's the outcome – "Another Vintage Year" (copyright 2014).

Of all my paintings, this one gave me the most genuine fun to do -- as you can see here.  And as it turned out, my hero Monsieur Matisse shared the laugh. It was only in my final week of working on this painting, as I toned up and toned down the background, that I noticed a small detail in my postcard reproduction. Almost hidden in the Odalisque's ornamental background is a vase with three red flowers!!

So there we have Poppy Past and Poppy Present...proof positive that every year has its own flavour.

Stories from out of the blue

It will come as no surprise to learn that my favorite colour is blue. When I first started painting, I went through tube after tube of Ultramarine Blue for paintings like "Beach Finds" (copyright 2003):--

Before long, I learned that historically, Ultramarine Blue was compiled from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Today, fine artist-grade "UB" is commonly derived from a chemical pigment blended with various media to produce all kinds (a plethora?) of artists' materials -- oil paints, watercolour, gouache, inks, pastels, acrylics. A small decade-old jar of liquid acrylic UB (not nearly as large as it looks here!) is still going strong for me -- and the UB pigment in a watercolour tube that dried out is still usable when diluted with water or acrylic medium.

In the early 1980s, Seattle's Daniel Smith Inks was my favourite art supply store (later, as Vancouver's Opus Framing expanded its line, I switched my allegiance). Just as magna-ficent Opus started modestly as a frame shop, the fabulous Dan Smith enterprise began as a small hand-manufacturer of fine-arts printing inks. Before long, Dan (yes, we all called him "Dan" in those days; he was that kind of guy) was making his own very wonderful fine-arts paints in various media -- and selling the original dry chemical pigment, too.

Not long after I connected with Dan, he became one of the first paint makers to offer Ultramarine Blue watercolour paint made from actual lapis lazuli. Of course, I had to have some -- even at the princely price of $18 (1980s dollars) for a 15 ml tube, compared to maybe $3 then for the chemical pigment variety.

I was always thrilled with the arrival of a Dan Smith mail-order catalog -- and better yet, my packaged order -- but this time I was rather disappointed that the blue tended toward grey (shown below, right) rather than the deep heavenly blue I love. It was then that I realized that lapis, like many other precious stones -- jade, garnet, opal, even the Certified Organic amber, -- comes in a whole range of tones and degrees of opacity.

But no matter. I now had not only my authentic though blue-grey lapis lazuli watercolour, but more lasting, my own small chunk of lapis in just the right blue shade. Having learned lapis lore with me, JT wanted to give me a ring. My birthday was coming around, and he surprised me with the gift of a loose stone -- the perfect colour, the perfect size, and the perfect cabochon cut (a domed oval), just as I'd described my wishes. At Vancouver's Circle Craft Co-op, we found a silversmith who took it from there, creating my vision of the perfect ring: The simplest setting with a medium-wide band fitted for my middle right finger.

I wore this ring virtually every day for probably 20 years -- until it would no longer fit over what had become a knobby arthritic knuckle. I've missed wearing it and as my 70th birthday approached, I thought..."Well, why not!? I could have it re-sized." We were cautioned there was a small risk the stone could crack when the silver was heated, but my magic ring -- my special 70th birthday present -- came through perfectly. I'm happily wearing it again on its customary finger, knobby knuckle or not.

Now you've read the lapis lazuli story. And you've read the birthday ring story. And this has been a rather long post. But from the blue realm of memory, there's another story of an odd adventure involving my special ring. Read on, if you're interested in Paris (the blue in my t-shirt is no surprise) and synchronicities...

The year was 1991 when JT and I made our third trip to France. We'd decided I would claim all my vacation allowance at once, and we would spend the full month living on the cheap in Paris, moving each week from one neighbourhood to another. That trip was the first time we'd seen neo-Nazi skinheads, and they were a scary bunch hanging around Metro (hey! what happened to my French accent marks?) stations with their shaved tattooed heads, scars, kick-'em-while-they're-down boots, tattered jeans and studded leather.

One day, we took the suburban train to Monet's Giverny. We'd barely settled in our seats when along came a guy in studded leather, big boots, bandolier across his chest. He sat down across from me in the double seat that faced us and began looking harmlessly out the window. The train started, and it was then that I saw that on the middle finger of his right hand, he wore......a ring identical to mine. I realize, of course, that there's nothing unique about mine -- the classic lapis colour, the classic cabochon cut, the simple classic setting. But when I say "identical", I mean just that -- the stones were perfect matches in colour and size; the style and dimensions of the silverwork were exactly the same.They could have been made on the same day by the same silversmith.

I can't account for my feelings, but I was somewhat afraid. What would this skinhead think and do if he realized "his" ring was duplicated on the hand of a middle-aged female tourist? I kept absolutely still, not even moving my hand from where it rested on my knee, hoping that he wouldn't turn from the window and notice. And as I sat silently watching him, I saw that this young man was a skinhead only in the World of Let's Pretend. He had beautiful, sensitive Arabic features, and his tough-guy get-up was just too new and shiny. He was still a boy, really, taking courage from wearing the "right" clothes.

This interlude couldn't have lasted more than five minutes when, ever sensitive to atmospheres, JT asked me, "What's wrong?" "Um, nothing," I said. But he had taken it all in -- the boy, the ring -- and said quietly, "La meme chose!" ("The same thing.") At this, the sensitive young man turned from the window, looked down and saw my ring, looked us each directly in the eye, then turned again to look out the window. The train reached its next stop, and the young man left us.

Now, so many years later.  What has become of the characters in this mini-drama?  Two different rings, two different life stories...stories from out of the blue.