Blog # 67... March 2017

Although we all enjoy a visit to the major museums, there’s also an allure in small personal collections - acting as repositories of artifacts from the past, collectors of memories, chroniclers of life.

Masset, BC

I’ve seen a tiny space in northern British Columbia, formerly a hospital, with the beds (4) instruments and equipment used in medical treatment, preserved in place as they looked over 100 years ago. And a few miles away, relics from a long ago general store, from hardware and groceries in their original packages to a few items of clothing, rubber boots and a smattering of things that defy identification.

As we get older and life gets more complicated, there’s an increasing interest in how life was lived in simpler times. We may only want to visit rather than go back - especially to the medical treatments - so these small brushes with nostalgia are precious reminders of how we got to where we are.

Those of us who are collectors (no, not hoarders, that’s a different thing) could all set up personal museums and my friend Jussi has actually done it.  He’s spent most of his life sailing in different parts of the world and his intense interest in things maritime has resulted in an amazing collection of objets.  Several rooms in the basement of his house have been transformed into a welcoming space to pause and look, read and reflect among the materials on show.

It’s curated with a lovely flow that leads the visitor from a corner of photos and newspaper pieces about a young Finnish girl saved from the Titanic (the museum is in Helsinki btw) to another with the landing card and immigration details from Jussi’s father’s arrival by ship in Quebec City in 1922. Across the room are two framed documents from Jussi’s sailing participation in the Olympics - Tokyo in 1964 and Mexico in 1968.

Binnacle from the Ariadne

Outside the door to the museum, serving as an introduction, is a large standing compass from the S/S Ariadne. She was seized by the Russians as part of reparations after WWll and the Finns were ordered to deliver the ship to Russia.  The captain left on Christmas Day 1944 and cannily ran the ship aground in a way calculated not to do too much damage, returned her to Helsinki harbor and sent a less valuable ship in her place.  She lived out her time in Finnish waters, retiring to warmer waters later in life.

The collection has the advantage of being a collaborative affair (obsession some might say) and probably no one in the family escaped an involvement of some sort.  If you’re thinking of doing a project like this, it helps to have an expert in lighting on your team.  The Maritime Museum bears the skilled stamp of Jenni, Jussi’s niece, who works lighting the exhibitions at several Helsinki galleries and has contributed a touch of coherence and style as well  as effectively illuminating the area….makes all the difference.

Since the opening party (held on Mardi Gras) Jussi has welcomed several smaller groups to see his show and plans to continue sharing his enthusiasm and stories from his remarkable life.   

Blog # 66…February 2017

                                                             

After the Women’s Marches recently, as many of us were rejoicing in our feeling of a common sensibility and wondering how to proceed, I heard Jesse Wente say on the CBC, “Now is the moment to begin the hard work and that start lies in art.”   Bingo, I thought.  Did you know btw, that in most indigenous languages, there’s no word for artist? Creativity is inherent in daily life.

From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the inquiry into the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls to the many other soul destroying things going on here and elsewhere, there’s sadness and outrage aplenty.    But small initiatives are starting to appear as people are trying to come together and make sense of it all and they’re using various art forms to do it

A group of Ryerson students have assembled articles from a murdered woman’s life as an installation to give substance and dignity to her memory.  A bit like a piece of music composed for the 10th anniversary of the Montreal massacre that chanted the names of the women murdered... changing the focus from the vicious act to the lives that have been ended.

In Prince George, Kym Gouchie wrote Cleansing The Highway of Tears while taking part in a healing walk in the summer of 2016. Across the country in Toronto, music instructor Angela  Rudden and her students at Dixon Hall composed an orchestral score to accompany the song. As well as the musical experience, the young students got a glimpse of a world far from theirs both in distance and in complexity.

On a larger scale, Kent  Monkman kicks off Canada’s 150^th birthday celebrations with  Shame and Predjudice   running until March 4 at the U of T Art Gallery, then embarking on a cross country tour.

Here’s what Monkman has to say about the show, “It‘s a pretty deliberate effort to have people reflect on the last 150 years in terms of the indigenous experience…the signing of the treaties, the beginning of the reserve system, the legacy of incarceration, residential schools, sickness, the removal of children in the 60’s, missing and murdered women.  There’s a lot of material in the show that tries to encompass and stitch together this narrative.”

The Daddies

What the pieces show is a wicked sense of irony, referencing classical painters of the period, sometimes incorporating  his alter ego, Chief Eagle Testickle often seen naked wearing only Louboutin pumps.

The Scream

 


                                                                           


The anguish of the "Sixties Scoop"is obvious as Mounties restrain mothers trying to keep their children from being taken by the priests and nuns.      










I was particularly moved byMonkman talking about the urban experience of native people... the city continues a sense of imprisonment -  they're not able to see the horizon, smell the trees or feel the wind. The imprisonment started with the reserves and continues with the disproportionate number of native people in jails, in some Canadian prisons as high as 60% of prisoners are native.

Kent Monkman, with his sly humour, offers some respite from the crushing weight of violence and poverty both for his fellow natives and for us, We'll remember his images long after the candles on our birthday cake have gone out.

And, our Iraqi refugee family is still resting safely in Jordan, awaiting the movement of the machinery that will bring them here.

Blog # 65…January 2017

Well here we are, moving further away from the millennium - people born that year old enough to drive and have a generation named after them.

I’m not in that generation but somehow feel that we’re all in this together.  Many forces divide us - haves/have nots, old/young, black/white /brown/yellow, nationalities or religions pitted against each other, opposing ideas about how to live; competition rather than consensus all are the order of the day in some quarters anyway.  At ground level, in families, difficult situations which could be made more comfortable if people were able to reach out to comfort each other - the mature and intelligent thing to do. We can only write our own scripts, but that’s what’s important anyway.

And yet, there are so many inescapable life forces that unite us, the inevitability of birth and death touches us all. A number of artists who died this year gave us the gift of a gracious goodbye…Leonard Cohen spoke of “running late… the bar closing”. David Bowie sang with courage from his death bed. Gord Downie continues to muster his strength to bring native issues to our attention as well as showing us how to leave life with grace. The Edmonton Arts council is appointing its first Artist in Residence for cemeteries, with a warm and inviting studio space to welcome people while they mourn loved ones.

In its many forms, art makes us feel less alone.  For me, two of the most powerful words in our language are “Me too”.  How my heart warms when someone says that after I express how I’m feeling. Art in its various forms also helps articulate our feelings, writers give  us the words to express ourselves, make us more comfortable with the issues because we have a handle on how to engage in conversation  with people who share our  feelings…or don’t.

A very important book by Canadian physician Danielle Martin has just appeared – Better Now:  Six Big Ideas to Improve Health Care for all Canadians. She feels it’s important not to be defensive; our system is good but needs fixing and we shouldn’t be content with the status quo.  Very useful to arm yourself with this information for the next time you encounter a Yank (or anyone else) yelling about the wait times or how our system is a commie plot.

And at the risk of seeming tangential, I want to finish with a shout out to the Cubans and the Americans who share uncertain futures in the New Year.   So, “Y soy Fidel” to those brave and proud Cubans and to our next door neighbours … “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”

Blog # 64…December 2016

Sometimes life seems to be about nothing but losses and this year has been unrelenting … mourning the deaths of our own loved ones here at home and, far too many of our fellow citizens in the middle east. Now horrors in a Christmas market and an art gallery

We.ve had some pinpoints of light shine through though. Gord Downie touched us all when he pushed indigenous issues into the spotlight by honouring the memory of Chanie Wenjak, the young boy who died attempting to escape from a residential school in the sixties. Gord’s beautiful tribute album Secret Path was followed by Jeff Lemire’s graphic novel The Secret Path which then was turned into the animated film that aired on CBC in October. It’s still viewable at cbc.ca/secretpath. 

“This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were….aboriginal children need to know that history includes them, this is not an aboriginal problem, it’s a Canadian problem” words from Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He and Gord Downie both have a place in my personal Hall of Heroes.

I’ve been blogging for five years now about how art in its various and wondrous forms can help us make sense of the world.  I still cling to that notion but its powers are being tested pretty sharply at the moment. Maybe like me, you need to take a break from worrying ocasionally… about how we’re losing respect for the value of work and of liberal democracy and most distressing - our environment. We need to avoid looking at the world outside sometimes, take a breath and relish what we have. A couple of new books may help you feel less "out to pasture"…Tom Friedman’s Thanks for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving and The Revenge of Analog : Real Things and why they Matter by David Sax.

So, enjoy the holidays, be happy and safe, hold close the ones you love.  We’ll pick up the worry beads again in the New Year and discover some art and artists to delight us all.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Blog # 63…November 2016

November, that cruelest of months, seemed to ramp up with vehemence last week in spite of sunny, eat-out- on- patios weather .  The election result – what will happen to the environment scares the crap out of me - while it’s far from the end of the story, mustn’t make us think this is the new normal.

We were still shocked and mourning Leonard Cohen’s death as we listened to his voice delivering In Flanders Fields on Remembrance Day. Then Sting performed at the Bataclan on the first anniversary of the murders there and elsewhere in Paris.

So many ways that art and artists bring us some consolation that we’re not alone either in individual or collective despair.  The current Syrian art at the Aga Khan Museum doesn’t make us forget the horrors of Aleppo but it does put us in communion with the culture and, I hope helps us and some of the newcomers  feel  less alone.

We watched Hillary’s avatar Kate McKinnon singing Hallelujah on Saturday night with an eerie feeling of counterpoint and coincidence, ends and beginnings.  As she said at the end, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.”

I hope the brightness of last night’s Super Moon brings in some light…the crack seems pretty wide right now. 

Blog # 62…October, 2016

More anniversaries - 400 years of Shakespeare, 50 years of Star Trek and This Magazine, wonder what will survive from 2016 to remember in half a century or four???

Art and social justice were discussed recently at Massey Hall, by four Canadians whose lives and work reflect their commitment to speaking out in their medium about violence, cruelty and unfairness in our world.

 

Film maker Deepa Mehta’s newest film Anatomy of Violence   looks at the brutal rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi in 2012. She takes the controversial approach of seeking to understand the young men involved and positioning them in the culture that produced them.  “It was too convenient for them just to be evil,” says Mehta, “we don’t become who we are in isolation.”

Buffy Ste Marie has dazzled us with her music and political activism since the 60’s when her voice joined many others (and how about Bob Dylan ‘s Nobel prize!) raised in protest about human rights, particularly speaking out for her aboriginal people.  Although her voice was silenced for many years, she continued to travel the world, finding songs in her head, “Life is precious and diverse and worth protecting.”   Back in full force, she won the Polaris Prize in 2015 for her moving composition Power in the Blood

Rebecca Belmore was the first aboriginal woman to represent Canada at the 2005 Venice biennale with her work Fountain.  The piece features water in its many forms as a symbol for one of the elements that gives us life and explores how women are involved in its provision. In this, as in installations that have followed, Belmore brings forward the complex association of people, places and things with a sensitivity to history and place and the way aboriginal people (women in particular) are treated as “other”. 

Andre Alexi won the Giller Prize for fiction in 2015 for Fifteen Dogs.   In this look at time, consciousness, belonging, mortality, art and love, he uses the device of imagining a wager between the gods Hermes and Apollo about whether dogs if they were given language would be happier that humans.  Hmmmm, I like the notion of running across a field, not to mention curling up for a nap in the sun, maybe dogs are happier even without talking.

Four Canadian artists to make us proud, revealing through film, music, visual art and fiction some of the deeper, sometimes darker, sides of life.

Then there’s the irrepressible Ai Weiwei who both tickles us and makes us think. His current installation at the Palazzo Strozzi  in Florence is a collection of red rubber dinghies, representing the thousands of refugees arriving in Europe from Africa and the middle east…. both a political statement and a brilliant contemporary contrast to what usually appears in this beautiful renaissance gallery.      

Speaking of refugees, we’re still waiting for our Iraqi family to complete their jump through the hoops of immigration                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Blog # 61…September 2016

How great to hear that the Paralympics are getting such attention in Rio. I loved the opening ceremonies, especially the piece by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.that was assembled at the end of the athlete’s parade - 500 plates shaped like jig saw pieces were carried in by the different delegations and placed to form a giant mosaic in the centre of Maracana Stadium.

Muniz first caught my attention with the 2010 film Wasteland. He visited Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill just outside Rio de Janiero where he spent time getting to know the catadores - the men and women who pick through the refuse.  They spend their days sorting it to be sold for recycling.  Muniz took individual photos and guided them in creating portraits of themselves out of recycled materials. The result was a series of pieces that were exhibited in a Rio gallery with the catadores proudly in attendance.

He spoke movingly in the film about how carefully he’d considered the experience of being subjects of an art piece and how it would affect the participants, conscious that the attention could set unrealistic expectations. Changes in their lives were generally positive, especially for one woman who chose to return to the dump to cook for the gang, realizing that she had some choices but it was important to be with her friends. Vik’s sensibility was a perfect match for the spirit of the Paralympics…as was Priscila Uppal’s when she was named Canadian poet laureate of the Games in BC and in London.  See Blog # 7.

The Paralympics themselves are incredible. I first heard about sports for people with disabilities in England when a colleague told me about the Stoke Mandeville Games (a UK centre for the treatment of spinal cord injuries) which were held first in1948 at the Olympics in London. The athletes participating were16 injured service men and women in wheelchairs competing in archery. The movement grew to the international event we recognize today...