fog and fall
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
by Marja-Leena
by Marja-Leena forest in our backyard
About two weeks ago, I made a long overdue first visit with some of my family (who’d been there before) to the very popular, though awkwardly named Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve located in the North Shore mountains behind us, right in Vancouver’s backyard. I don’t know why I’d waited so long. There are numerous trails to explore through these beautiful forests so I look forward to visiting many more times. The only problem was that I spent more time taking photos than walking so I may have to leave the camera home if I want to get a workout.
Anyway, I promised more photos from that first walk, and being on things arboreal, it’s just in time for this month’s Festival of the Trees, being hosted at the beautiful trees, if you please.The deadline for submissions is September 28th, so there’s still time to participate.
One of the things I love about the Pacific Northwest is our forests and the way the tall trees create a magestic canopy overhead. Here and there were orange and rust coloured sculptural forms standing out from the darker green background of cedar and hemlock, often highlit by a perfectly placed beam of sunlight, like a spotlight on the star of the stage. These still brilliant skeletons look like they may be the remains of giants felled by last winter’s huge windstorms. Here was beauty even in the early stages of decay. At the same time we were appreciative that they were still full of life giving nutrients for future trees, birds, bug-eating creatures and the ecology of the forest floor – a circle of life.
by Marja-Leena autumn and sauna
We said goodbye to summer and welcomed autumn by working outdoors in our yard all weekend. All day yesterday we were cutting and pruning some hugely overgrown laurel to let in some sunlight, trimming some of the neighbour’s birch tree branches that were resting on our roof, bringing in some pots of tender plants and rooting cuttings of favourite flowers for next year’s garden.
Our bodies ached all over from the full day’s physical labours, but we had a wonderful reward last night. We’d made a couple of fresh ‘vastas‘ from those trimmed leafy birch branches. (It’s usually done in early summer, but we were desperate!) We fired up our sauna for the first time since last winter. Aaah! I don’t remember how many years it’s been since we’ve had vastas. Beating aching muscles with these leafy, fragrant boughs in the hot steamy sauna makes for a wonderful massage, relaxing mind and body. I was even transported to the past, remembering other saunas. I fell asleep last night the minute I put my head on the pillow.
As most know, the sauna (pronounced ‘sow-nah’) is an important part of Finnish culture. I love the authentic sauna, usually a separate building or one half of a Finnish summer cottage, with its wood-burning stove covered with rocks and with a tank of hot water on one side. Situated next to a lake or river, it’s wonderful to go for a refreshing dip or swim, then back into the sauna again, and repeat as desired. The steam (löyly), the birch vasta and the swim are very much a part of the ritual of the sauna.
I’m not as fond of the ‘city’ sauna with the electric-fired stove because it’s a bit drier and I miss the cooling swim. The vasta is often missing too unless one makes a special effort to find birch groves in the country, gather the branches and store them. My parents were keen sauna bathers so my father built this one in our house when they lived here in their retirement.
(Our local recreation centre has a sauna with the electric stove but they don’t allow water to be thrown on the rocks. Without steam it’s not a sauna! )
Lots more work today continuing the cleaning up! Huge laurel branches strewn over the yard had to be trimmed and chopped, thick branches cut for firewood and the rest hauled into the trailer to be taken to the greens recycling depot. Raking and more raking. I even pulled out wild morning glory and blackberry branches that were invading from over the fence. Another sauna tonight?
UPDATE Sept.26th: In case you missed the comment from Dem, who is an Englishman with a Finnish partner, he has posted a video of how to make a vasta over at his blog. Thanks, Dem!
by Marja-Leena rocks bearing fossils
Eight years ago, when I had an exhibition of my works in a gallery in Edmonton, Alberta, my husband and I decided to deliver my framed works by car and make this journey into a bit of a holiday. One of the highlights of this memorable trip was seeing the Hoodoos near North Battleford, which I’ve mentioned here a few times before. The other was a visit to the fantastic Royal Tyrrell Museum. It’s famous for it’s paleontological collection, which I certainly enjoyed, but I was very excited by the fossil collection and snapped a lot of photos of these.
Being in glass cases with low light, not all the photographs turned out well. Here are a few of my favourites. Like the hoodoos, some of these images became incorporated in several of my prints.
This one was used in Paths XII and Paths XIII/Nexus and others.
This one appeared in several pieces including Nexus V, Nexus VII and Nexus/Blue II and III
See what happens when I go through old photographs!
by Marja-Leena dying languages
Image credit: Enduring Voices Project
Finnish was my first language. I was five years old when my family emigrated to Canada. Arriving in Winnipeg, I was promptly placed in school, not knowing a word of English. Now that was language immersion! I don’t remember much of those early scary days. I was already reading Finnish and we continued to speak Finnish at home. I learned English quickly enough as children do, but my parents’ English was never perfect. LIke many working class immigrants, they were too busy working hard to survive to take more than a couple of basic language classes. Some immigrant parents, wishing to learn English through their children, did not allow their native languages to be spoken so some of my friends lost most of their mother tongue. I’m sure this was typical of many immigrant experiences in North America and other parts. These days, I’m sad that my Finnish is not a strong as English from lack of everyday practice since my parents are no longer with us.
Perhaps because of that, I’ve developed strong feelings about language being part of a person’s identity and connection with his or her roots and culture. So whenever I read about how many languages are dying around the world, I feel sorrow at the world’s loss of so many cultures.
Yesterday’s Vancouver Sun has one such story, B.C.’s native languages rapidly dying: linguists
Indigenous languages are dying off at an alarming rate in British Columbia, prompting linguists to include the province on a list of the five worst global “hot spots” for language extinction. Most fluent aboriginal speakers are aged 60 or older, and their languages will be lost forever when the last speaker dies, said David Harrison, co-director of the Enduring Voices project, which seeks to document and revitalize languages slipping towards oblivion.
and…
Much of the blame for language loss can be tied to residential schools, UBC linguistics Prof. Suzanne Gessner said. For decades, children were taken away from their families during the school year and educated in English. A compensation package designed to address the wrongs of residential schools did nothing to revitalize languages, she said — and last November, the federal government cut $160 million in funding for aboriginal languages.
Further links:
Enduring Voices Project
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages
Why preserve languages? – my post of spring 2004
by Marja-Leena Marianna Schmidt
Exhibition Catalogue Cover: MARIANNA SCHMIDT, When You Are Silent, It Speaks 1991, mixed media on paper (38.5 cm x 28.2 cm). Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Belgium
I have a bad habit of visiting exhibitions at the end of their run but my excuse this time was that I learned about these very late. Over the summer there were three concurrent exhibitions of work by Marianna Schmidt around the Greater Vancouver region, but by the time I knew about them, only one was still up. As a printmaker, I would have loved to have seen her prints at the Burnaby Art Gallery. However, I was very pleased to have seen a large body of Schmidt’s mixed media works at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coquitlam (a suburb of Vancouver) on its last day and last hour!
Her work went through many styles but for me her most powerful and moving works are those that remind me of the German Expressionists.
I met Marianna Schmidt many years ago when she was a visiting artist at our studio. Her personality and her prints made a strong impression on me that I’ve not forgotten. I always wanted to learn more about her life and work so I was eager to buy the excellent exhibition catalogue, written by Robin Laurence, Darrin J. Martens, Bill Jeffries and Ellen van Eijnsbergen – and have already started to read it. The inside fold has a perfect summary for those who don’t know this artist:
Marianna Schmidt (1918 – 2005), who lived and worked in Vancouver, British Columbia from the mid-1950’s until her death in May 2005, was an accomplished and idiosyncratic modernist. Hungarian by birth, she fled her country as a refugee in 1944, and spent years in displace persons’ camps on Austria, Germany and England before eventually migrating to Canada. Not surprisingly, the most persistent feelings in her art are those of loneliness, alienation and painful dislocation. Whether depicted in prints, drawings, paintings or collages, her twisted, distorted and fragmented figures are often stranded against featureless grounds, huddles in inhospitable rooms or suspended above place maps and generic landscapes. The crisis they evoke is both universal and particular.
Still, humour, irony, pathos, celebration, and a keen interest in the human circus also find expression in Marianna Schmidt’s art. This publication is the first posthumous attempt to honour her entire career and to place it within the context of her life and times.
Links:
the Evergreen Cultural Centre page and Photo Gallery
Review by Ann Rosenberg with more photos of work
Carnaval Photos and Paintings at SFU
Article in the Straight
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Ghent, Belgium which has a large collection of Marianna Schmidt’s works, loaned for this exhibition
by Marja-Leena at the Vancouver Art Gallery
This past Thursday evening Erika and I had a date at the Vancouver Art Gallery. We were there to see several exhibitions, two of which finished today.
1. The biggest attraction was the Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art
Henri Fantin-Latour
Marie-Yolande de Fitz-James, 1867
oil on fabric
Gift of Lewis C. Williams
© The Cleveland Museum of Art
Monet to Dalí represents the most comprehensive showing of European painting and sculpture in Vancouver in more than half a century. Drawn from the superb collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the exhibition consists of more than 80 paintings, drawings and sculpture that demonstrate key examples from the European modernist movement. Organized into four groupings, this exhibition covers a century of art making from 1864 to 1964 and showcases important work by the major Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, early modern sculptors and avant-garde artists interested in Dadaism, Cubism and Surrealism. Most notably, the exhibition includes key works by Manet, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Dalí and other renowned artists. Together, the works in this stellar collection illuminate the breadth of creativity in one of the most extraordinary epochs in the history of Western art.
Many of the works were wonderful to see, but very difficult and frustrating because of the crowds that would create bottlenecks around the most famous pieces. Even though entry numbers were controlled, there were far too many people in there for decent viewing. I should have gone during a morning rather than an evening of the last week.
Here is more information and a few images of some of the works.
2. On the second floor were the massive works by an artist new to me. Very impressive – he must have an airport hangar for a studio!
House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective
Huang Yong Ping
11 June 2002 – The Nightmare of George V, 2002
concrete, reinforced steel, animal skins, paint, fabric cushion, plastic, rope, wood, cane seat
Collection of the artist
Installation view, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Photo: Gene Pittman
House of Oracles is the first retrospective of Huang Yong Ping, one of the most influential contemporary Chinese artists working today. Showcasing paintings, drawings and sculptural installations that evoke the fun house, diorama and menagerie, the exhibition celebrates an artist whose work elegantly traverses the divide between East and West, tradition and the avant-garde.
Renowned for his extravagant large-scale installations, the exhibition will feature more than forty works, including a monumental sculpture that positions a snarling tiger atop an elephant, a 100-foot long wooden python skeleton and the re-creation of a Beaux Arts-style bank using 40,000 pounds of sand. In addition to these spectacular installations, the exhibition includes significant early works from the artist’s career, reflecting his interest in ideas on chance, creative process and divination.
Born in Fujian Province, China in 1954, Huang Yong Ping formed the Xiamen Dada group in 1986. One of the most radical of the Chinese avant-garde artists’ groups active at the time, members were inspired by their interest in the work of Marcel Duchamp, Dada and the role of chance in art. The group’s subsequent activity, particularly Huang Yong Ping’s artistic production, are often considered among the first post-modern works in Chinese art and are credited for opening new channels for other Chinese artists, who until that time were predominantly influenced by the conventions of Socialist Realism.
Since his participation in the seminal exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Pompidou Centre in 1989, Huang Yong Ping has lived and worked in Paris and exhibited extensively around the world.
3. On the third floor is Andrea Zittel: Critical Space, still on until September 30th
The first comprehensive North American exhibition to survey her work, Andrea Zittel: Critical Space will present the American artist’s particular interdisciplinary way of working as a designer, engineer, consultant and advocate using the corporate identity “A-Z Administrative Services. For the last decade, Zittel has investigated fundamental aspects of contemporary life in Western societies, notably increased mobility, security, comfort and consumerist packaging. The exhibition focuses on the experimental character of the artist’s signature objects, equipment and projects. It highlights models for and locations of alternative living, including her well known customized trailer-home Escape Vehicles, Uniforms and “units” she has developed for specialized living, working and research.
4. The top floor has Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, mostly the VAG’s collection and some private loans. We did not have time for this one but I’ve seen and enjoyed many of them numerous times over the years.
The three very different exhibitions, all very powerful and satisfying in varying ways, made for a great night of art viewing! I must say that the VAG has been bringing in some very good shows the past few years. No cameras are allowed at the VAG, so I’m sorry not to have photos to show here.
by Marja-Leena a busy week
After a coolish beginning to September, we’ve been enjoying glorious warm sunny days, sometimes even as hot as 27C (80F). Last Saturday I spent one long day outdoors doing garden chores. On Sunday, we met a daughter and the granddaughters on their little bike and trike at Mt. Seymour’s forest trails for a long walk. There were numerous people walking, jogging, cycling, and roller-blading. I was the slowpoke as I frequently stopped to photograph the gorgeous forest – there just may be a future post for the next The Festival of Trees.
After the two hour forest walk, we drove over to West Vancouver to deliver my work to the Ferry Building Gallery, then went walking around for quite some time before we could decide on a place to eat. Afterwards we had another long walk heading further west along the busy seawall, to watch the magnificent sunset. Then another long walk back to the car to head home, very tired but happy.
Last night we attended the opening of the invitational show that I’m in, Making An Impression. The small gallery was so packed that we could hardly walk around and see the work, and the noise was incredible. At one point I had to escape outside for a walk to the nearby Ambleside Pier for some sea air and some quiet. The show looks great. The photos are not really worth posting, just masses of people blocking any good overviews of the show. If you are in the area, I think it’s really worth a visit. It continues until September 29th.
Over the next few days, there are two or three more exhibitions I hope to see, two of which are coming to an end. We’re also attending RETURNS. So, whew, it’s suddenly a very busy time. As happens every September, my free time feels squeezed as I spend more time making art and seeing art after a lazy summer.
by Marja-Leena playtime
…inspired by this week’s theme ‘lapsi’ (child) at Valokuvatorstai (PhotoThursday)
by Marja-Leena giant datura
We have a spot next to the front door where we keep a planter of seasonal flowers. This past spring we bought a tall blue glazed ceramic pot to replace the ancient rotting wood one. Filling the tall pot with a rich mix of soil and compost, I put in a jasmine vine, red pelargoniums and yellow sanvitalia. It looked lovely as it bloomed away.
Sometime later I noticed an interesting looking volunteer peeping out, not a weed I thought so I left it to see what it would be. It did not take long to grow bigger and bigger with leaves twice the size of my hand. I suspected it to be a datura, but I’d never seen one this big, as if it was on steroids! The poor pelargoniums are so shaded that they hardly flower anymore.
Recently a flower emerged, a large creamy trumpet pointing up, with a faint tropical sweet scent, and I knew it to be a datura, possibly the the inoxia species.
The golf ball sized spiky fruit is fascinating, isn’t it? And look at this tiny visitor.
One gardening site stated that compost is not a fertilizer, only a soil amendment. Hrrmph, I thought, not so. I grow good tomatoes with only compost and now this monster plant is further proof! I think the writer was just interested in selling their fertilizers.
I wonder if the mail person is getting worried that this monster plant will come out and grab him one day as he reaches around it to push our mail in the slot, heh.
These interesting stories about the myths, magic and medicinal uses of datura top it all for me.