creative forces

Blog 14…October 2012

You know how you never go to see the attractions in your own city until someone visits… well, this summer I had a houseguest from Bangkok and we explored a couple of Toronto's little treasures together.  First, the Bata Shoe Museum where we took  a look at the glamorous shoes that Roger Vivier created for Christian Dior. On the floor below, we saw how the footwear of indigenous people reflected and accommodated their environment.  

After lunch, we searched out the Textile Museum of Canada (buried on Centre Street near the bus terminal).  There’s always something fascinating there - war rugs, prayer shawls or a range of costumes. This time it was Dreamland, a look at our Canadian landscape, with elements of thrift, beauty and utility from Quebec catalogne to Red River coats to the rugs of the Gagetown hookers. A particularly moving tableau showed two sisters embracing in the bareness of a Saskatchewan prairie.  Both of these small places are easily accessible, not expensive and definitely worth a visit, even without houseguests.

The tables were turned recently when I was in Helsinki and discovered a very special show in the City Hall lobby that I introduced to some local friends. It was also fun to talk to the staff there about our Toronto City Hall designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell.  

The show features the work of Helja Liukko Sundstrom and celebrates her fifty years as ceramic artist with Arabia Pottery. As well as designing many of  Arabia’s signature pieces, she’s a wonderful story teller who has written and illustrated a dozen children’s books -  the stories reflecting  the joy and sorrow inherent in our lives as well as the uniqueness of Finland's history, landscape and culture. 

In the current show, she’s moved into adult material with a tribute to the role women played on the production line at Arabia.  In one series of ceramic panels, she’s rendered images of women leaving their children in dark early hours and arriving at the factory gates to work until the shrill of the 5 o’clock whistle when they head home, again in darkness, to cook dinner and prepare for the next day.

A second series of 20 panels - each one about a foot square - is a gesture of love and appreciation of  her grandmother’s life, from birth, through schooldays, marriage, childbirth - setting out charming domestic scenes throughout her life to the completion of the cycle with her aging and death, There is a particularly touching panel showing how a few Finnish soldiers disguised in white tablecloths and bedsheets halted the invasion of the huge and powerful Soviet Red army during the Winter War.

I enjoyed the show for the third time with my friend Jussi who enriched it even more for me by pointing out cultural references that had gone over my head. 

This blog is being written with with beautiful Muskoka colours outside the window and is dedicated to him.