Marja-Leena Rathje

Saturday morning I had a major shock on opening my blog and finding a commercial page on it and my own contents gone! It’s been hacked and stolen, I think! My email was also down, though the alternates on different servers still worked. My site manager said it seemed my domain had expired, an oversight by the server. It was corrected in a few hours, thankfully, but it was most interesting to note the major dip in my stats, and my own anxiety level which revealed my addictive dependence on my blog! Apologies to readers who might have tried to visit my blog yesterday morning.

Hopefully this event is the last of some technological glitches that have occurred the past few days – things happen in threes, right? On Thursday at the studio, I was preparing to print on the wide-format printer, but there were problems with the newer computer CPU that had been set up to work with the printer. After much time and frustration, the older CPU was put back temporarily while the IT person was going to “fix” the newer one, and I was able to print a couple of proofs.

At home, later that evening, I finally decided to upgrade to Tiger, the latest Mac operating system that has been out for awhile and the rest of the family had already installed months ago on their machines. All seemed well. Friday I decided to do some scanning. As I mentioned before, our scanner is an old model which is connected to an old computer which I access through the network via a piece of software called Apple Remote Desktop. Well, Mac told me it was not installed! Turns out that version is too old for Tiger and I would have to buy a new one – argh! That’s why I hate upgrades!

Anyway, back to Saturday – the rest of the day was blessed. Glorious and much-missed sunshine tempted us out to enjoy spring. The highlights of the day centered around art and a lovely walk around a garden and a lake.

Burnaby Art Gallery is always a favourite place for us because of the lovely old heritage house converted to gallery that features a lot of print shows. This time up we viewed 30 x 30, contemporary small prints from Malaspina Printmakers downstairs, and upstairs were older works from 1977 from Malaspina’s first archives that are in the BAG collection. Interesting to compare the years’ works and an interesting history lesson for me, as a past Malaspina member, is that the workshop originally started right on these grounds at the Burnaby Art Centre (now Shadbolt Centre of the Arts) in 1975.

Afterwards, as always it’s such a pleasant treat to go for a walk on the grounds. We enjoyed the daffodils and spring perennials though it was a little too early for the numerous huge rhododendrons. And there was a very colourful wedding party having photos taken here. My husband managed to capture the scene below before we headed down to the trails by Deer Lake.

Later in the early evening we went to Dundarave Printmakers on Granville Island for the opening of Tomoyo and Taiga’s Made in India exhibition of prints. Beautiful new prints by very prolific artists, mostly etchings by Tomoyo and monotypes by Taiga – do go see these if you’re in the area!