urban textures 2
2:16 pm
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by Marja-Leena 
by Marja-Leena textures in March
7:24 pm
a bunch of seeds hanging on a wall
and seeds falling on a rail
a burlap bag – what is inside?
I watch paint peel
by Marja-Leena island hopping
11:20 am
Last weekend we finally, after many years since, revisited Hornby Island, one of our favourite places on BC’s west coast. Creating our own five-day long weekend beginning Friday morning (August 28th) we caught the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, always a lovely ride over the Georgia Strait (or Salish Sea). From Nanaimo we drove north on the Island Highway to Buckley Bay to catch another but much smaller ferry to Denman Island, followed by a pleasant drive across that to catch the ferry to Hornby Island.
Our dearest friends have a lovely treed property with a cosy one room cedar rondavel (eight-sided cottage) which they always so generously give to their guests while they sleep in a tent trailer. Otherwise we spent all our time outdoors with an outdoor kitchen and picnic table where we lingered over many meals with much conversation. Across the road is the path to one of the rocky beaches. The roads and paths are lined with bushes heavy with blackberries.
Hornby Island belongs to the northern group of Gulf Islands but I believe they are all noted for their sandstone formations.
We took numerous photos that I’ve barely sorted through yet, including the petroglyphs that we’d seen long ago and I’d used in some of my work. It’s amazing that we even saw a beach we’d not seen before with dramatic cave and hoodoo formations that were wonderful to photograph. As some readers know, my photos from past visits to Hornby have appeared here as well as in many art works, see some links below. I hope to be posting some of these new ones in the near future.
Too soon, Monday morning we packed up, took the two ferries back to Vancouver Island, then drove south to Victoria, then north to Saanich to visit my sister-in-law. The next day we drove back south to Victoria to visit with a cousin and his partner over coffee at the Royal BC Museum‘s cafe. We had planned to see the exhibition from the British Museum but with only a bit more than an hour left the $27.50 per person seemed too steep.
Instead we walked around Victoria Harbour, had a bit of lunch, then went to visit my 81 year-old aunt. That was heart warming for we hadn’t seen her since my uncle’s funeral nearly two years ago. Back to sister-in-law’s for a bit then onto the ferry line up and the journey home. All that driving left us tired and happy to be home again in our own bed. It’s taken all week to recover from the holiday, what with catching up with chores, getting my prints together for an upcoming group show and attending a memorial service for a departed friend.
This Labour Day long weekend our eldest daughter is here to visit her sister and nieces one more time before they return to England. We have been worried about the forest fires raging in BC, especially near their home east of Kamloops. Her partner stayed home to keep watch in case of an evacuation call if it gets too close. The good news now is that rains have helped to reduce the dangers, and some families that had evacuated another area have been able to return home. Yes, it’s a rainy long weekend here, much needed, so we were very lucky taking our mini-vacation last weekend. Anyway, it’s a busy happy family time…
Related links:
my favourite rock, now gone
my petroglyph photos in a book
a petroglyph
Hornby rocks
another rock photo
and another
by Marja-Leena autumn at home
6:15 pm
surprise sunrise scene in the kitchen
lovely blossoms still blooming madly but producing only plum sized squash babies
from volunteers that appeared late in the summer and have grown like Jack-in-the-beanstalks in the new planting bed
the best fall ever for the Michaelmas daisies
by Marja-Leena winter journeys
3:00 pm
Husband and I have been planning a trip to our favourite place near the Pacific Rim National Forest Reserve, on the western edge of Vancouver Island near Tofino. We call it our ‘treat and retreat’. I’ve written of past trips before, as well as more recently about our yearning to go there again.
At last husband found a week to spare between work projects. Having also repaired his sister’s computer and wanting to return it to her, we first went to Saanich, north of Victoria, on Friday after work. It took that evening and a good part of the next day to reconnect the internet service and set up wireless in her home. The latter just would not work, probably due to some barrier set up by the service provider. Anyway, we had a nice visit, as always, with Brigitte and our nephew and his girlfriend. He’s been teaching English in South Korea for a year and may go back, so it was great to see him.
Sunday morning, February 3rd, we finally left on our short holiday. We took the Brentwood/ Mill Bay ferry across to Highway #1, bypassing Victoria. The sun came out and shone for most of our journey, how very lucky for us. The mountains were beautiful, covered in snow quite far down, something we’ve never witnessed here before, and we could see more and more snow on the ground the further north and west that we drove, but thankfully the roads were clear. It had been a concern after last week’s storm.
As we often do, we stopped for lunch next to beautiful Barclay Sound in Port Alberni. The last stretch of highway furthest west is rough, very windy and made even narrower by the high snowbanks. How I wanted to take photos but there were rare spots to stop. There was snow even on the coast, though less of it, very unusual for this area. Apparently this community was cut off from the rest of the island for a couple of days last week.
We’ve been very lucky most trips to have sunshine on arrival. It was low in the sky when we arrived at Long Beach, always our first short stop for a long look and deep breaths. After checking into our cabin on the waterfront on relatively sheltered McKenzie Beach, we went down for a walk and a mad session of shooting photos, each of us with a camera. Sure, sunset photos are a bit much, but I also took a lot of interesting closeups of sand and surf – who knew what the weather would be like after today?!
Sure enough, we had storms! This is what some tourists come for, though they stay in the luxury hotels, with hot tubs and fireplaces overlooking the ocean. Winds up to 90 kmh, lashing rain and hail, and even snow one day. It was surfers paradise, though they had to choose the quieter beaches. We managed walks in the less stormy periods, but not the very long hikes that we usually do. We both had colds, so we did more of the rest and relaxation this time.
In our visits over the past couple of decades, we have always stayed in one of these rustic gothic arch cabins, all wood ceilings and walls inside, with basic amenities of a small kitchen and bath, without TV, phone or internet. This year, wifi was advertised so we brought our toys. However the connection was very flaky and weak, so I was just barely able to receive a few emails, and post one photo here. We watched, heard and marveled at the storms, listened to music, read, played cards, consumed our provisions, napped and had a couple of fantastic local seafood dinners in town.
The drive home yesterday went safely, noting a few vehicles stuck in ditches or in the even higher snowbanks. If we’d tried to come home a day earlier we’d have run into trouble, not having snow tires on our vehicle. Good to get away for a treat and retreat and good to be home!
Today I’m busy preparing for family house guests for the weekend. Sister-in-law is coming. Our eldest daughter and partner are planning to travel down this afternoon from east of Kamloops, but the two main highways have had avalanches. One of them is now open, or they may have to come via the Okanagan and the southern Highway #3 – a bit of a worry with all this snow and avalanche danger. Hope they arrive safely!
We have lots of great photos to share, but just this one for now for it may take a few days for me to catch up around here, including reading everyone’s blogs!
by Marja-Leena family days
1:16 pm
Yesterday late afternoon we returned from several days away traveling and spending time with our three daughters and two granddaughters at our eldest daughter’s place in the Thompson River Valley region east of Kamloops, BC.
A neighbour raises a few goats and llamas for fun and they are allowed to graze in the lands behind this small rural community. So we all enjoyed visiting them close up with some treats of alfalfa cubes and raw carrots. It’s amazing how the young animals were attracted by the young humans, so much so that youngest granddaughter was just a bit fearful when their attentions became too forward for her.
On our last evening one of my nephews and his wife joined us to share in a feast of fresh-caught salmon just brought home by daughter’s partner from a fishing trip with several buddies off Prince Rupert on our north coast. Besides lots of salmon, their catch included rock cod (or was it rock fish?), crab, red snapper and a 42 pound halibut! Their freezers are now well-stocked for another winter.
It’s a hot dry region and I had dreaded the heat but it did cool down on our second day, even rained a tiny bit now and then. Our drive home yesterday was accompanied by lots of rain. Back home, sister-in-law had been taking good care of my garden and plants and our home and was also helped by some rain. She just left a couple of hours ago. Soon eldest daughter will be arriving to spend a few more days with her sisters and nieces. Busy days!
by Marja-Leena one of those days
7:53 pm
Yesterday morning I met with friend W. to take slides of some of my past year’s work. Our group had arranged a slide shoot day in early April, setting up professional lights and equipment. Lots of work was shot, but time ran out for a few of us, including yours truly, whose work was there but whose body was in bed with bronchitis.
So today we set up the lights and equipment again but ran into delays searching for missing light reflectors and their connectors for the tripods. Duct tape, as usual, came to the rescue. The setting up and shooting took about two hours for my six pieces; fortunately N. came in right after me to do hers, so the setup time was more worthwhile. Many thanks to W. for his photography expertise and taking time out from his very busy schedule to do this for us!
I learned that our favourite and best film processor who would do slides overnight has gone out of business. Now I wait ’til Monday to see how the the slides turn out. I might still take digital shots of the last three prints at home because the tungsten lights for the slide film produce a brown cast in digital, or I will scan the slides. So, a little more patience before they are uploaded here.
When I got home around noon, I discovered that our internet was down. NO email, no blogging, no browsing; four hours later, ditto. So we called our IP provider who said there were no service interruptions in our area. Checks and restart attempts determined that our modem was not working. Someone would come by the next afternoon (today).
My other half had gone out of town on business earlier in the day. Daughter and I went to our local library to use their computers. I could not access my mail because I could not remember my password for webmail, not having used this service with this account yet! However I got some books and we rented a DVD movie for a mother-daughter night! She missed her IM friends, I missed the blogosphere, but we enjoyed our supper and movie.
This afternoon, our connection is working again, after seemingly a mere tweak by the serviceman. Life is back to normal – or is it?
But what does other-half’s going out of town have to do with any of this? Well, it’s become family history that almost everytime HE goes out of town, something breaks down. When we had babies and diapers, it was the washing machine. Later on, the boiler (for hot-water home heating) would give up on the coldest days of the year, including once or twice with both of us gone leaving the kids with Granny. HE is the fixer-upper, the handyman and the troubleshooter, and HIS machines at the home front miss him, we believe.
by Marja-Leena Healthy Artist Guide
1:12 pm
I blogged a couple of months ago about Toxic-Free Artists via the Toxic Nation E-News here in Canada. Today, I received the December issue. (Sorry, I see the whole online version doesn’t seem to be up on the web just yet, it’s coming up with the November issue). Most interesting and useful to artists is the follow-up The Healthy Artist Guide to a Less Toxic Studio. A must read!
In my many years of art practice as a student then artist, I’ve exposed myself to an alarming amount of toxic artist materials. In art school I worked with plaster for sculpture, with oil paints, varnishes and turpentine, and with etching acids and solvents to clean printing inks. Later I’ve worked with ceramic glazes, batiking dyes, acrylic and watercolour paints, glues and other items listed in the guide. Then as a dedicated printmaker I used more acids, darkroom chemicals and solvents. I’ve always used rubber gloves because of sensitive skin but haven’t always used masks, trusting the schools’ and studios’ ventilation systems if they were there at all or as good as they should have been.
As home renovators too, we’ve used various paints, varnishes, drywall and wood fillers and nasty cleaning products. I shudder at all my exposure to toxins – it’s no wonder I was tested to have heavy metals in my body! Nowadays ventilation and safer materials and their use in educational institutions have improved greatly. I don’t do printmaking or painting at home. I’m fortunate that I am able to do digital printmaking, by working initially at my home computer and then printing at the studio. Instead of etchings, I now make collagraphs and I may do some drypoints again sometime. The studio now has the less toxic ferric chloride in use in the event that I succumb to a temptation to etch. I still have to use solvents minimally for cleaning but do so under very good ventilation. Awareness is now key.
If you are an artist, craftsperson or even a home decorator, I recommend looking at this checklist. What changes have you made to reduce your exposure to toxic materials?
ADDENDUM Dec.17th, 2006: I just remembered an interesting article about oil paints I’d read from a brochure once, which I don’t have, but this article has some of that information. It might be helpful to those of you who paint with oils. They may be safer than acrylics if you use the safer solvents. I suggest searching the Gamblin site if this interests you.
by Marja-Leena collagraphs
9:30 pm
Anna, in a nice comment on Memory/Dreams II asked “what’s a collagraph”? Googling came up with these results:
“The Collagraph print is best described as a collage printmaking technique, where the image is composed from a variety of textured materials glued to a substrate and printed either in an intaglio or relief fashion.” – from EKU.
“In a collagraph, the plate is built up and manipulated by the artist, using a collage-like process which combines materials as diverse as cardboard, fabric, gesso, glue, string, sand, carborundum grit, and found objects. The artist can also draw lines into the gesso before it hardens. As a result, the plate may print as both relief and intaglio. Collagraph prints are usually pulled on a press.” – from Washington Printmakers, a good site on printmaking techniques.
Back in March, I wrote two posts What is a Print? and More on Prints, which give some links to sites about printmaking techniques. Interesting that they did not include the collagraph.
The Dreams series of prints that I have been putting up recently, are all utilizing the collagraph technique, sometimes in combination with other media. I am currently working with collagraphs again, now in combination with inkjet prints – I will show these when they are done. I usually like using matboard as the plate, and with acrylic medium I glue on textures like string, cloth, tissue paper, as well as utilizing the medium’s painterly textures, and pressing in textures using various objects. It’s a very enjoyable and non-toxic process that gives interesting results!
by Marja-Leena Lucia and lights
3:05 pm
How lovely, on Lucia’s Day to have our first real snowfall, light flakes slowly dancing down, the frozen ground now white and an icing-sugar-like dusting on evergreen branches. It set the right mood for finishing up the holiday letters and cards.
We were lucky to have two weeks of sunshine before these clouds came along, but the days are short, the nights long, thus our craving for light becomes a part of the season’s celebrations here in the northern lands.
St. Lucia is celebrated by the Scandinavians, even the Finns now. Expatriates might have such celebrations in the Scandinavian community centers outside their home countries. But we had a small taste of another celebration yesterday when we met friends from out of town for lunch at the beautiful VanDusen Gardens. It’s the setting for the annual Festival of Lights. It was a treat to see them come on in the darkening afternoon just before leaving but we had no time to go in for a walk for it’s a huge park. We have enjoyed those amazing light presentations there one night some years ago with these same friends and it really is a magical place. The garden volunteers spend two months putting up the lights.
On the drive home we spotted Christmas trees for sale next to a Catholic church doing a fundraiser for their school, and so it was we picked up a tree, saving a trip out today! It’s sitting inside the garage in a bucket of water, awaiting the night we bring it in and put on lights and ornaments. We usually do it on Carol Ship Night when the boats go by all lit up with lights, with the biggest one ringing out Christmas carols.
Now that the letters are done, thoughts turn to start cleaning and decorating our home. On Wednesday, our family in the UK are arriving, so there will be the merry sound of excited and happy grandchildren in the house again! Soon there will another midwinter celebration of light.