Tag: transformation

Get Your Garden On!

There are lots of great things about being involved in the artistic and artist-run community in Edmonton, but one of my favorites is the capacity for people to come together to make things happen that they want to see happen.

That was certainly the case today at Harcourt House!

I’ve been a bit buried in work lately on all kinds of fronts (hence the silence here!), and I was in need of some down time that would get me out into the lovely (finally, at LAST!) Spring weather we’re having. I get serious Spring Fever – and there’s few things I like better at this time of year than digging in the dirt and watching things come to life after our long Prairie winters.  And quick as you can say ‘there’s a rabbit over there’ (there was one on the lawn today), the gang at Harcourt came to my rescue with a lovely little project to improve the look of the front lawns in front of the two buildings there.

The signs out front are in need of repainting – a job on the list for this summer – but before that can happen, we needed to do something about the overgrown daylilies that grow in front of one of them … and the Annex Building front yard really needed a bit of sprucing up.

Presto! A project was born!

Stacey, Brittney, and I got to work early this morning to dig out the lilies from the first bed; in addition to needing to be split, those lilies were crowding a whole bunch of lovely tulips, so those needed to be coaxed out and moved as well. I’d also brought some irises and a delphinium from home that were in desperate need of splitting, so we had the makings of some lovely flower beds right from the start.

We got to digging, and digging. And digging. And Splitting root balls. And weeding. And weeding some more. And moving dug up sod from one place to another. And on we went … for several hours.

The three of us were also joined by Zach, Harcourt House’s designer, and Derek (the Executive Director) came by to see how things were going in the afternoon.

By the end of the day, we had dug a long bed almost the full width of the Annex Building, planted it, and had finished a second bed by the Annex Sign with all the lilies left over from the first transplanting!

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A great day spent in the sun, helping things grow, and making our little corner of the world a nicer place. There’s more to do, of course – there always is – but for now, we can keep those plants watered, and watch them get used to their new home.

There’s something really quite delightful about spending time doing something like this with creative people; we are often making work or doing research that is much more open-ended, or that doesn’t provide the same sort of absolutely tangible “Look at what we got DONE today” kind of satisfaction. I think we all went home knowing the satisfaction that comes from making something with our hands, in real time, and seeing the results of that labour immediately. I certainly know I did.

A good day, with good people.

And these lovely folks also do other lovely things when they aren’t in the garden! Have a peek at Stacey’s, Brittney’s, and Zach’s work.  You’ll see some good stuff growing there too.

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Fires of Fear, Part 2

This past Sunday at the Silver Skate Festival was the second day of the “Fires of Fear” sculpture event.

This day was devoted to the creation of a collaborative work – one sculpture, made by all of us, to be committed to the flames on the Sunday night.

The day’s work was quite a bit more challenging than I (and my colleagues) had hoped … fact of the matter was, the weather conspired against us a bit. It turned chilly and windy on the Sunday, so we were all thoroughly bundled up against the chill, and seeking out hot coffee and soup frequently! This was happier news for the artists creating snow sculptures and for the skaters and skiers to be sure … but my hands were not terribly happy – or cooperative – in the cold. Still, there’s something to be said for adversity bringing people together – we all worked hard to get the sculpture finished early so we could take a long warm-up break before the night time burn!

For this sculpture, we took another page from the curator’s folktale narrative and created a giant wolf … in the folktale for which our sculptures were made, wolves were (logically enough) something that the villagers feared, but they were also denizens of an alternate reality, a world of magic and possibility and adventure. So, it seemed only fitting that we close the “Fires of Fear” by creating one of these lovely beasts!

And here are some photos of our day’s work, and the final, spectacular burn that night:

I feel really fortunate to have been able to participate in this wonderful event.  I worked with some lovely people, had a ridiculous amount of fun making work, and I got to play with fire!

What more could I ask??

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Fires of Fear

Had an absolutely tremendous time at the Silver Skate Festival this past weekend!

Wonderful bunch of other artists to work with, and the festival itself is really quite an event – a great blend of sport and cultural events (there are events going on this week too, culminating in weekend celebrations and closing). My thanks and congrats to everyone involved in the festival – well done!

One of the things I found so inspiring about the festival was the curatorial focus we were given as participants; it’s all well and good to get a bunch of artist to make work, but having a thematic/narrative frame for our efforts really made things happen. As artists, we were actually ‘characters’ in a story,  so we were contributing to (and connecting with) the theatre and storytelling going on in other parts of the festival site.

I’ve always liked the idea of committing the things we most want to release to the transformative power of fire; such a process provides a deep level of engagement with change in so many ways. And there’s a fascination with fire and  the spectacle of it – the beauty, power, danger – that has a the capacity to draw people in that other things do not. It’s visceral, immediate on many levels simultaneously.

There’s alos something incredibly liberating about creating something that you know will be irrevocably changed/transformed shortly after its completion. I won’t say the sculptures we made were  destroyed – they weren’t, really, in the grand scheme of things. Not at all – the fire changed them tremendously on one level, but what could not be altered by the fire was the  participation by each of us in the entire process: the making, and the sharing of that making was to me the real art here.

Still – the things we did make were pretty great all on their own! I was really fascinated by the range of work produced: we each took the idea of creating an effigy of something fearful in completely different directions.

Here are some images from the Saturday “build and burn” – there were six artist-teams each producing a separate sculpture on the first day:

And then … we got to do it all again on Sunday! Part 2 to follow ….

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Gifts of an Unexpected Nature …

I’ve spent a lovely time over the last while catching up with family and friends.

A very good thing, that reminds one on so many levels of precisely how rich life is, and how many blessings there are to count. Daily.

In all that running-around-hanging-out-gatherings-feasts-grabbing-a-coffee-because-its-been-too long .. there has been such joy and laughter and simple pleasure, in amongst the (sometimes) madness of the season.

And there have been some unexpected gifts, which are always the best kind to receive; they make one think the most, over the long run …

To wit:

A lovely person that I have only had the pleasure of getting to know over the last few months gave me a most delightful and intriguing gift:

Beauty and simplicity (and those of you who sew will get the pun!)
Beauty and simplicity (and those of you who sew will get the pun!)

 

This was a lovely thing in and of itself – I hadn’t in the least expected it – but double the delight once this mysterious package was opened:

 

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… what better, than an old and well thumbed book of poetry??

 

And the magic grew, as the cover was opened:

... someone (several someones, actually) had responded to the poems in a variety of ways!
… someone (several someones, actually) had responded to the poems in a variety of ways!

The wonderful experience of uncovering and discovering the marginalia in this book is a gift many times over, in itself a series of delights and mysteries.

Thoughts. Questions. Analysis. Little windows ...
Thoughts. Questions. Analysis. Little windows …

 

I was particularly struck by the headings added to several of the pages; an apparent correlation between the written word – the poems – and particular Hollywood stars from another era:

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… there’s also: Basil Rathbone, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Cary Grant, Fibber McGee, George Burns, John Wayne, Shirley Temple, Jane Wyman, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Carol Lombard (“later” – this a particular shade of definition added for her only) … and many others …

I will be the first to admit I have yet to spend a great deal of time poring over these thoroughly intriguing notes and associations. But perhaps that isn’t the point, entirely.

On considering this lovely little volume and its contents, and its coming into my world, I am struck most by the potential it contains. Just now at least, I am most entranced by the layers of understanding in these pages, the different rhythms of reading and understanding that so many people have brought to these words over so many years. And it strikes me that I don’t need to know all of it – I will likely pore through this volume over the coming months, and read every passage and every note taken and added there – but that will only satisfy part of my curiosity. And  this process will only uncover (or recover) part of what is really there.

The real beauty in this gift lies in what I cannot ever know – about who read and who wrote and why – and in what struck the person who gave this gift to me at the moment they found it: what told them that I was the person who was to be the next custodian of these words and ideas, compiled from so many sources?

What a delightful and thoughtful thing: to give a gift that shows in its being such complete mystery.

So like this time of year as a whole, this little book shows me yet again – regardless of one’s affiliation, practice, understanding, or belief – perceivable reality is stunning all on its own. That moment of really seeing is precious.

We have passed the shortest day of the year, the light is returning, and while we wait for the thaw and the next cycle of growth, many things of import are going on, in many worlds simultaneously. Not the least of which is the perfect glint of brilliant winter sun on drifts, the scrunch of  snow under boots, the welcome of a sparking fire and a big mug of tea, the moment when someone smiles from beneath layers of clothing. And the passing on of old books with notes penned in the margins.

Best of the Coming Year to you All.

 

 

 

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All that glitters …

The whirl of seasonal events is well upon me and mine  …

It has been quite lovely the last little while,  connecting with friends and seeing what scheduling wizardry we can manage to see one another around all the commitments that seem to overtake calendars this time of year.

Had a lovely time this past Saturday at Print Affair: Silver and Gold, SNAP’s annual winter fundraising event.

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Some truly beautiful work available, and it was a great night of running into people and catching up. I even donated some block prints and a copy of NEST {types} to the fundraising efforts, and the work seemed to go over well. It feels good to be able to contribute to this organization in some small way – they do great stuff!

But that’s not all that’s been glittery/shiny/sparkly in my corner of the world lately … do you have one of THESE in your neighbourhood???  :

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This is a special sort of madness that grips certain people this time of year. The people who do this display (really lovely people too, BTW) have mastered the fine art of going completely over the top! This light show has grown over the years – roughly doubled in scale and wattage every year for the last 4 or so (they are almost all LED lights thankfully).  I don’t really know what to say … It’s amazingly gaudy. It’s hardly environmentally friendly. It brings all kinds of traffic into the neighbourhood every night, that crawls past completely oblivious of pedestrians and other vehicles.

And yet …

For all the negatives, there is something ridiculously, hilariously great about it – not the least of which is the utter delight that these folks take in doing it. It takes them literally months to make the armatures and mount all the lights, and weeks climbing up and down scaffolding, ladders, and (this year –  another first!) a bucket truck.

Call me just as crazy – but I find their childlike joy in making this happen quite lovely (and a little refreshing) … yes, I know that in many ways, displays like this exemplify the commercial crassness that has overtaken the season (I won’t even get started on all that’s wrong with using conspicuous over-consumption to drive the economy …).

But for all of that, there’s still something about those lights on a very cold, dark winter night that reminds me of what it was like the first time I ever helped string lights when I was a little girl. And that moment of magic when they were plugged in, and the snow sparkled with every colour of the rainbow.

It is a time of year when we celebrate the return of the light, after all …

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What the Land Teaches

I have been waiting, impatiently, for Spring to really happen in my part of the world … and until recently, I’ve only been given glimmers, little teases of what might come, someday: a day of golden, sun-drenched warmth in which I didn’t need both jacket and sweater, or the first tiny urgings of new green on the tips of tree branches and coming out of garden soil. But none of these seemed more than moments or hints, tagged with the codicil ‘not yet, not quite yet’ – as the cold returns as quickly as it left, the plants seem to stop and wait, and I am left with it the feeling that the warm will never come, never stay. This has been particularly evident for me this year through the force of contrast: travel has taken me places filled with the real green of spring lately (Victoria, Toronto), places full of the promise of another season’s growth become amply evident.

… one of the first, and one of my favourite, signs of coming warmth …

It is the harsh abruptness of this place – the certain, sudden change from warm to cold, sun to gunmetal skies and bitter wind – that, for all my years of living here, I have never quite  been able to get used to. We tend to make jokes out of it here on the Prairies – the weather in particular being a source of humor around its fickleness (and our frustration at its inconsistencies).

…taken April 5. We’ll likely get more of this before it warms up ‘to stay’ …

Somehow though, I think all our laughter is an attempt to mask a much deeper recognition: our utter insignificance in relation to these larger cogs of the Universe, always and insistently turning around us. This is a land of huge skies, violent thunderstorms, blizzards, blistering sun, howling wind … Rivers choked with ice overnight at spring breakup, the magical dance of the Aurora. We are less than dust motes in the face of this. And yet … through sheer perversity or tenacity, or just dumb luck, we manage to get through it, and find our reward in that very abruptness: when the change comes, it is dramatic, and feels (to me at least) as a small but crucial reward for waiting, for being stubborn enough to hang on and wait for the change to come in its own time.

And I am reminded that persistence is sometimes a very quiet thing; it happens under the surface, under cover, but is no less powerful for all of that. And from that essential will to  be – that force that brings change and transformation, sometimes of magical and dramatic proportions – comes all beauty and life.

This, today – from the vantage point of literally hundreds of kilometres away from this fickle and abrupt landscape that is in my bones – is what this land teaches me.

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Markers

Midnight brought the first real Spring rain to my corner of the world. This seems utterly fitting: rain that means new growing things, melting of the last snows, the washing clean of everything to start over. This is new, and old at once. Old in the way that each wheel’s turn reminds us that it has been this way for a very long time – and we are a part of that (if we choose to pay attention). New in the shape and character of this particular rain: its nature contradicts experience of this place, raises questions, reminds of other times and places.

Prairie born and raised – and now marking my first half-century on this day – I know what Spring Rain is in this place (or should be): coming out of nowhere, cloudburst, pummelling and drenching everything … and gone before I had time to get out the rain gear, leaving everything chilled and soaked to the bone and wondering what just happened.

But this rain isn’t like that.

This rain is steady, softly insistent and insidious. The stuff of coastal climes, oceanside, northern rain forest. The kind of rain that would have me hunting massive beds of moss in Goldstream Park on Vancouver Island, or walking the shore of Point Pleasant Park or the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Such a rain should make me wistful – nostalgic even – for these places that I love so much, that are part of the beating in my blood. But today … for some reason, today this rain makes me feel forward not back: quiet anticipation, the slow building of excitement for what will come, in every way.

Already, the shift has begun – the first marker of change: the buds on the May tree outside my house have burst open overnight to reveal the crisp green points of leaves. This first hesitant dusting will open over the next few days, proclaiming colour and promising scent from blossoms still latent, not yet formed.

Building things, growing things, changing: it feels as though these states, the active modes of being, are the shape of my life and work. What has lead to this moment in time … and what will shape the days to come.

And so much coming into being, and so soon:

The Catalysts Launch is this Sunday, April 15… and the books are coming by courier to my door today! Can’t wait to see them, and share that moment with my friend and collaborator Catherine, and then send the work out into the world with her.

This volume contains an essay co-written by yours truly!
This event is taking place in Edmonton, AB, Canada. Hope to see you there!

The Poetry Festival is coming soon, and with it the Sketching with Words workshop – which will be great fun to facilitate with Shawna Lemay.

Then Toronto, to Launch Catalysts there May 1 & 2.

I’m working on a little sculptural installation for the Fast & Dirty Collective too, for their show Curiosities, which will travel to various places in Edmonton on the weekend of May 11- 13.

And in between times, the work on NEST continues, as does work for on a particular aspect of the project in advance of the Harcourt House Open Studio event on June 21st.

It looks like a to-do list … but what I am really doing is counting blessings today, for all that I am doing, and for all of the magnificent people in my life that inspire me and make it all possible. A remarkable, humbling thing, this life.

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The Speed of Life

One of the most interesting things about living on the Prairies is the way in which we – collectively – respond to the shift in seasons. As the world outside my window slowly wakes up from winter sleep, the realm of human activity (and creative activity in particular) seems to have gone into overdrive, overnight. So many new projects appearing, new exhibitions opening … it seems we take celebrating the coming thaw very seriously out here! NOT a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it does make for a hectic pace.

Or perhaps it’s just me, becoming conscious of the number of things to be accomplished in the calendar over the next few months … likely a bit of both! Still, it is good to feel the blood moving, be surrounded by things to see and do … to really get going now that winter seems to be leaving us behind for another turn of the wheel.

To that end – I’m happy to say that I spent a lovely evening last week at the opening of Love Letters to Feminism at The Works International Visual Arts Society. LLTF is an international mail art project curated by Carolyn Jervis; Carolyn started the project in 2009, and this first iteration was exhibited through the Women’s Studies program at the University of Alberta. Since then, it’s traveled to Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa … and has gathered submissions from artists and writers from all over the world.

Exhibition View, Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton

Exhibition View, Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton

One of the best things about this project, to my mind, is the dynamic nature of the entire thing: each piece is part of an ongoing dialogue, and the exhibition is a conversation in progress which will continue to grow and change as more work is added. It’s not about having answers, it’s about asking questions of ourselves and of the cultures in which we all continue to find our way in and through.

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Kristen Hutchinson

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Kristen Hutchinson

It’s been an interesting personal journey too: I submitted my first piece for this show in 2009, when I was living in Halifax for a year, and the second work I did was submitted for this particular iteration of the exhibition three years later. In many respects, the two ‘letters’ couldn’t be more different from one another, including tone and approach to the subject.

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My first letter, 2009
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My second letter, 2012

That in itself has been an incredibly valuable thing to me as an artist – to see the concrete manifestation of a shift in perspective through my work. To be faced with such a tangible marker of change – at such a moment of transition in the year – seems fitting: it’s a clear reminder that both the work and the individual are always in process. The only constant is transformation, is change … and hopefully growth.

Love Letters to Feminism 2012, Edmonton
Work by Marian Switzer

This ever-changing body of work reminds me that there are innumerable ways to explore any subject, that it is in the exploration and the manifestation of those ideas that we discover not ‘the answer’ … but that there are only answers: in the ongoing work of really seeing as many sides of a subject as possible, and digging into each one in turn to find out what remains to be discovered. There is always more.

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Photos of EGG and Make:Believe, phase 2

As promised – photos of the teo projects discussed at length in my previous post!

Also – have inserted a few images in the previous post, to illustrate what I was on about a little more clearly.

Enjoy!

First – two more pictures of EGG, in its final home:

EGG, resting on its bed – showing some of the internal structure

View of EGG facing the dugout

More views of Make:Believe, showing the recent construction:

Another view of the second structure, on the edge of the grove

A view of the second structure, taken facing into the property from close to the road

Another shot of the third structure; the trees to the left may supply a second ‘wall’ in another year or two.

Two views of the connecting tunnel/path structures – the upper image is taken from within the center of a branching path, and the lower image is a long view taken from one end of the main path which joins the fist and third structures in the grove.

I am hoping to make at least one visit to Make:Believe this winter, after the snow flies. Whilst I am less than enthusiastic about the coming cold, I am eager to see what these structures will look like covered in snow!

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