Sunny Dog Day Markets
August 7, 2011
 Just as we’re winding up, we are winding down. A few more of these August markets and we will have finished before we really began. The weather gave us a non-summer this year and we just have to be happy with what we have.
Mottled light made me want to dig out these glass plates I managed to rescue from a dumpster in East Van… way back when. They raise the little bud vases and long-necked stem vases to make them look like they’re floating. The stones underneath give them the illusion of being plates of water. Short summer, long days, I’m more than content with having even just a few of these days. |
Comments (0)
“Summer” Market
July 20, 2011
While the east languishes in the heat, we, on the ‘Wet’ Coast are growing webbing between our fingers and toes. Our water collection tanks at home are full – first time ever mid summer. More markets have been spent figuring out the logistics of canopies, tarps and other creative anti-rain devices.
It’s not all bad though. I love that visitors stroll around the market in the pouring rain sipping their coffee. The kids are wearing rain jackets, shorts that do not extend below those jackets, and flip flops. BECAUSE IT IS SUMMER.
The only set back with all the rain is that it is darker than I would like it to be. But our garden is the most lush it has ever been; road-side blackberry bushes are chock-a-block with blossoms… and you know what that means!
Paper bags don’t work in the rain. It’s too cold to wear summer clothes. I’m pretty sure I’ll need Vitamin D supplements by winter. But – the beaches are not filled with partying rowdies… Our neighbour hood is quiet this summer. I could learn to like the rain forest summers…
Comments (2)
The Importance of Ritual
July 17, 2011
Yesterday evening we held a memorial for a lost young kayaker here on Hornby. Hundreds of people, members of the community, visitors and relatives of this young man gathered in the meadow above Big Tribune Bay. We gathered in silence, in an enormous circle, and joined hands in quiet contemplation. Many brought flowers, rose petals and small wooden boats to launch into the sea in tribute to our fellow islander.
It was a humid, cool, blustery evening; the rain mixed with tears on everyone’s reddened cheeks. The boy’s parents were the first to launch a tiny wooden boat with an eagle feather for a mast. Next, individuals all the way down the beach, over a half kilometer, entered the water’s edge in turn to scatter petals and flowers.
Doug and I waded in past our knees in our rain gear to launch a 2′ wooden kayak that Doug had carved out. He also made a tiny paddler with paddle raised in jubilation over his head who sat fixed in the boat. The kayak surfed little waves and made its way out to sea but the wind, rain and tidal pull, brought him back to shore where he came to rest in sea foam and rose petals. We pushed him back out and let the waters determine his fate.
This morning we went back to the beach, as had many others, to revisit the memorial. Many people were relaunching boats that had been left behind after the tide left last night. Others came to light candles in those same boats this morning. Our wooden kayaker had been rescued by a woman who set him upright in his kayak and left him just at tide line. When we got to him, Doug sent him back to sea and by the time we left he was well on his way out to the deep.
This was such a powerful memorial, unifying so many people and reminding us all that no one here is alone in their grief. It was a deeply moving and even joyous event; it was a regenerative deep expression of love, community and humanity.
Comments (2)
Roses Are Not Overrated
July 10, 2011
the scent of a rose is an olfactory lullaby
Just this week, at over the age of 50, I have finally come to realize the poetry of the rose. The delicacy of its petals, the profound effect of its subtle fragrance, and the beauty of its myriad forms.
We have lost a teenage boy from our island; he is ‘a missing person presumed drowned’ in a kayaking accident and his loss has affected all of us.
But, in the past week, with the response of the community in the face of this heartbreak, I am seeing a depth in each and every person that I did not (maybe could not) previously see or appreciate.
I bought a bouquet of roses from a woman who owns the Old Rose Nursery here on Hornby, and those roses have had an unexpectedly powerful effect on me. As they sat in the sun at my booth at the Farmers Market their fragrance followed me all day.
When I brought the roses home their scent filled the house. And it has calmed me down. It has made me just a little happier and a little less hopeless.
Life, in its heights and depths, is incredible.
Comments (1)
What the Rains Bring
May 30, 2011
While most of our country is under flood water, we in the West have been collectively complaining about our persistent rains. I say look what our rains bring and thank your lucky stars we live where we do.
Wild Rose Buds air dried and added to mint tea...
Oyster Mushrooms pan fried in butter...
Comments (0)
The Wide Ocean — Pablo Neruda’s incredible poem
May 16, 2011
Ocean, if you were to give, a measure, a ferment, a fruit
of your gifts and destructions, into my hand,
I would choose your far-off repose, your contour of steel,
your vigilant spaces of air and darkness,
and the power of your white tongue,
that shatters and overthrows columns,
breaking them down to your proper purity.
Not the final breaker, heavy with brine,
that thunders onshore, and creates
the silence of sand, that encircles the world,
but the inner spaces of force,
the naked power of the waters,
the immoveable solitude, brimming with lives.
It is Time perhaps, or the vessel filled
with all motion, pure Oneness,
that death cannot touch, the visceral green
of consuming totality.
Only a salt kiss remains of the drowned arm,
that lifts a spray: a humid scent,
of the damp flower, is left,
from the bodies of men. Your energies
form, in a trickle that is not spent,
form, in retreat into silence.
The falling wave,
arch of identity, shattering feathers,
is only spume when it clears,
and returns to its source, unconsumed.
Your whole force heads for its origin.
The husks that your load threshes,
are only the crushed, plundered, deliveries,
that your act of abundance expelled,
all those that take life from your branches.
Your form extends beyond breakers,
vibrant, and rhythmic, like the chest, cloaking
a single being, and its breathings,
that lift into the content of light,
plains raised above waves,
forming the naked surface of earth.
You fill your true self with your substance.
You overflow curve with silence.
The vessel trembles with your salt and sweetness,
the universal cavern of waters,
and nothing is lost from you, as it is
from the desolate crater, or the bay of a hill,
those empty heights, signs, scars,
guarding the wounded air.
Your petals throbbing against the Earth,
trembling your submarine harvests,
your menace thickening the smooth swell,
with pulsations and swarming of schools,
and only the thread of the net raises
the dead lightning of fish-scale,
one wounded millimetre, in the space
of your crystal completeness.
Comments (1)
Love Hate Consumerism Relationship
May 14, 2011
When Doug and I moved to Hornby we envisioned a life with less of what we didn’t need and more of what we did. This island, at the time, appealed to our desire for a life of restraint and frugality; we liked all the do-it-yourself types of people. Instead of wanting more, we wanted less. Less clutter, less stuff, less needless spending.
But I make objects for people to buy – how do I reconcile that with wanting all of us to buy and need less? I have the debate with myself again and again. ‘… it’s not plastic… it’s not disposable… ‘ How to balance ideas of restraint with ideas of avarice? There must be lots of room in between there somewhere.
Now on Hornby, as in many places, we are seeing a rise in consumer culture with very large houses being built that sit empty most of the year. These are second or third houses that are heated, use resources and sit as testimonials to grand consumerism. Grand collections of stuff – more stuff. And because of these houses, a number of people have full-time work building… I have summer customers… It goes around and around.
How do I reconcile what I do with the lifestyle I am vigorously training myself to espouse? I don’t have the answer. I have already talked about being a recovering Catholic…. But smarter people than me have had these thoughts: Marshall McLuhan said, “Affluence creates poverty.” But Woody Allen said, “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Maybe I should just relax a bit….
Trying to live a 'green' life...
Comments (0)
Beauty Heals
May 13, 2011
“The effect on sickness of beautiful objects… is hardly at all appreciated. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form; by color and light, we do know this, they have an actual physical effect.” – Florence Nightingale, 1860
Comments (1)
Time: Nature’s Carving Tool
May 10, 2011
If there is one abundant natural aesthetic here on Hornby Island, it is texture.
Walk on the beaches, through the woods, over the headwaters and you will find spectacular examples of the work of time on material.
Some surfaces lend themselves to more radical change than others, like this magnificent tree root. What amazes me is the consistency in the patterning whether it’s rock, wood, shell or sand. It never ceases to amaze me.
A few years ago a man who bought my work recommended a book to me that he thought I would find interesting – given my fascination with flow patterns. Theodor Schwenk’s Sensitive Chaos opened up a whole other field of exploration for me; it’s all about the flow patterns of water and air. On this island there are endless opportunities to enjoy these mysteries.
Comments (2)
I Am Not Chromatically Challenged
April 29, 2011
Cups Filled With Light
Sun is streaming through my studio windows filling the cups I have just taken out of the kiln with light. They are positively glistening.
I struggle with white. Many people struggle with white. White is clinical, your grandmother’s chinaware, diner iron ware – tea pots that dribble shamelessly. We have been conditioned to see white as sterile and void of character as well as of pigment; it’s hard to warm up to white.
But if I remember correctly from my scant years at art college, isn’t white all colours? When I look at these white cups in the sunshine I am reminded of why I choose not to use colour with this work. If I used colour, the quality of light would be entirely different. With a clear glaze the warm white of the porcelain glows with whatever quality of light shines into it. So, actually, it is not the white I’m looking for in this carved porcelain, it is the light shining through the work. No work at all on my part.
Light is unique to porcelain. No other clay displays this attribute and I think it is best captured through a transparent clear glaze that acts like windows between the ridges in each cup in the thin spaces that define the carving.
After a long dark coastal winter, I cannot have enough cups filled with spring light.