by Marja-Leena

an artistic savant

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Video excerpt from Expedition ins Gehirn (Beautiful Minds: A Voyage Into the Brain), Colourfield Productions, Dortmund, Germany
Watch this 5 minute video** of a brilliant artistic savant who goes for a 45 minute helicopter ride over Rome. He then draws an accurate representation of the city from memory onto a 5 1/2 yard panorama panel in 3 days! Stephen Wiltshire’s inspiring story is one of many featured in an article about the Savant Syndrome.
**For those with a dial-up connection, here’s a lower resolution video.
(Thanks to artist Marc Robert North for posting this link in the Carfac-BC newsletter.)

November 24, 2006 in Other artists 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

thankful

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A Happy Thanksgiving to all my American blog friends and readers! I’m enjoying reading some of your thanksgiving posts. Many count the blessings in their lives, or the things they love about Thanksgiving. Here’s Patry’s number 4:

“Traditions. In our family, we all write down one thing we’re thankful for and put them into a cup. Just before dinner, we take turns drawing one out, reading it aloud, and guessing who said it. One rule: you can’t say anything you used in a previous year. (That prevents boring people like me from saying “my family” every time.)”

This made me think of my own family and one Canadian Thanksgiving (in October) a few years ago. We decided to do something new – we all held hands around the table and each in turn said what he or she was thankful for. Our grand-daughter, perhaps three years old then, remembered this and always asks to do this at every big family dinner. A new tradition started by a grandchild and remembered year round – how wonderful is that?

November 23, 2006 in Blogging, Culture 4 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

the xylothek

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Alnarp, Sweden is the home of a unique Wooden Library.*

The wooden library, or xylothek (from the Greek words for tree, xylon, and storing place, theke) consists of 217 volumes describing 213 different species or varieties of trees and shrubs.

A xylothek is generally speaking a collection of simple pieces of wood specimens placed together in some kind of cupboard. In a refined form it is in the shape of “books” where you can find details from the tree inside, everything arranged as a “library”. This latter form flourished in Germany around 1790-1810. Four different manufacturers existed and three of them offered their products for sale. The Alnarp collection is an example of that.

Each “book” describes a certain tree species and is made out of the actual wood (the “covers”). The spine is covered by the bark, where mosses and lichens from the same tree are arranged. “Books” of shrubs are covered with mosses with split branches on both covers and spines.

Read more about these exquisite works, and their history and how they came to be in Alnarp, Sweden.

View the gorgeous photos by Mikael Risedal – be sure to click on each to view much larger.*

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(Thanks to wood s lot for this stunning find a while ago. I’m late posting this.)

* March 28, 2014 – link updated as site has changed; photos no longer enlarge.

November 21, 2006 in Books, Culture 12 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

student work

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Head Study – drypoint, image size 11 x 8.5 cm.

Recently I was going through the very few prints that I still have from my long-ago art school days. This small drypoint is one of them. I remember how fascinated I was in observing heads from an odd perspective, the heads as if slung back, or viewed from a child’s eye level.

November 18, 2006 in Older Works, Printworks 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Nov.16th

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(the view outside my office window on a drier day)

I seem to be focusing on weather lately, as is everyone else living in southwest BC. Yesterday’s massive storm topped all previous storms of this stormy month! Powerful winds and heavy rain caused all kinds of havoc. Ferries shut down, highways, houses and powerlines were hit by falling trees. By late Wednesday afternoon, 210,000 BC Hydro customers were without power, including one daughter’s place in Surrey. It even caused a four-storey building under construction in East Vancouver to collapse and has left 125,000 still without power today. Port Alberni on Vancouver Island was hit particularly hard. I think the Hydro crews deserve a huge thank you for the hours and days of dangerous work they are doing to remove fallen trees and restore power.

Thankfully we haven’t been affected in any serious way. The only impact for me has been that the Capilano College campus was shut down yesterday and today because of a water main break, so I haven’t been able to go and work in the studio. Hopefully all will be repaired for tomorrow. Weather-wise it will be a normal damp November with no storms until the next one on Sunday.

November 16th will always be an especially significant day for us, thanks to the birth of our second grandchild and my art opening one year ago. I loved one commenter calling it “an opening act”! We will be at a special little birthday party this afternoon, then we meet dear friends for dinner. Since they moved to Victoria we only see each other once in a while, so it will be a real treat. A special day ahead!

UPDATE NOV.17th: On the way out yesterday, we heard that Greater Vancouver residents have been advised to boil their water or use bottled water! Then this morning’s Vancouver Sun features huge headlines on the front page Two million told: Don’t drink the water. “One of the largest water warnings in the province’s history was issued Thursday for Greater Vancouver’s two million residents after torrential rains triggered dozens of landslides into the region’s reservoirs, turning tap water cloudy and brown.” Now the city of Nanaimo has the same advisory. This may last for a while with Sunday’s expected storm.

At the restaurant last night, we were unable to get our usual glasses of tap water, instead having to purchase bottled water. No tea or coffee either! I wondered if the kitchen did not know how to boil water, heh. Anyway, yes, we had a wonderful time at the birthday and then meeting our friends. Guess what we talked about – the weather!

November 16, 2006 in Being an Artist, Current Events 18 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

mellow

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Well, it’s still rather soggy in southwest BC, with storm after storm bringing us more heavy rains in the past nearly two weeks than we normally get in the whole month of November, usually our wettest month of the year. More storms coming and no sun in sight on the weather map! Our backyard is a swamp but at least we aren’t flooded by overflowing rivers like in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver. It’s too wet to rake the leaves or dig up the dahlia tubers buried in wet mud. The past few days have gotten colder so I hear the mountains have lots of snow, I just haven’t seen it with my own eyes with those very low-hanging dark clouds. We did manage a walk between showers, finding ourselves stopping for several pleasant chats with neighbours out trying to clean their yards.

As I’ve written earlier, we are enjoying the coziness of the indoors. Saturday evening, we filled and lit the fireplace with logs, put on some old favourite music like Anne Sofie von Otter’s Wings in the Night (Swedish Songs) and sat down with some books. In this relaxing and mellow atmosphere I found myself often pausing in my reading to enjoy the best passages of the music while gazing at the dancing flames.

I’m reading Anita Konkka’s A Fool’s Paradise. I’ve been enjoying her blog Sanat (Words, in Finnish) for some time and have been wanting to read her books but they’ve been out of print until this translation. From her blog, I know that Anita has a deep interest in dreams and astrology, and that shows in the book. To me the writing is minimalist yet very visual as she describes vivid images and actions from dreams and real life, and sometimes the two seem to merge. Something about the mood, the air of mild depression and the slow almost total lack of a plot reminds me of some of Aki Kaurismäki’s films. I haven’t quite finished it yet but it is deep, thoughtful and satisfying reading. I wonder what it would be like to read in Finnish, probably a bit challenging for my rusty vocabulary.

Husband’s book The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles by Bruce Lipton excited him so much that he was reading passages aloud, leading us into some animated discussions. We’ve been turning away from much of traditional Western medicine and pharmaceuticals and looking at alternatives, so this book was very inspirational and hopeful.

Sunday was family day. Our eldest daughter and her partner were in town unexpectedly so we were all together playing with the grand-daughters and then having a nice meal around the extended table. This long weekend felt almost like Christmas, was it the mellowness?

Reviews of A Fool’s Paradise by Anita Konkka at:
Literary Saloon
Now What blog
Guardian
And an interview

November 14, 2006 in Books, Canada and BC, Music 9 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

poppy day

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Wear White Poppies for a culture of peace
Today on Remembrance Day in Canada
Many thanks to wood s lot who always finds such treasures

UPDATE: 8:30 pm. I’ve just been reading a lovely post about Remembrance Day as experienced by an American now living in Vancouver. I didn’t know that the Market at Granville Island observes this day by publicly asking everyone to “observe 2 minutes of silence in remembrance of the soldiers who had died in the past World Wars.” I don’t know if many stores do this as I don’t seem to shop on this day.

This brought back memories of school days too long ago when we had to go to school on the morning of Remembrance Day to attend an hour of service. Various speeches, and maybe films were followed by two minutes of silence, then the slow call of a bugle would follow, which always made my skin crawl and emotions swell. Nowadays school kids have a service the day before so they can have a full day of holiday.

Anyway, this brings up a perfect opportunity to introduce Loud Murmurs which I’ve been reading with pleasure for some time, almost since blogger David Drucker and his wife decided to leave the US and move to Vancouver. He’s written about the many trials preparing and then moving, finding a home and jobs and about his experiences living in another culture. It’s always interesting to me to read about how a newcomer to this city and country views life here.

ADDENDUM Nov.12, 10:30 pm: If you haven’t already, please read the first comment below. It’s a moving and lovely poem written by a very good online friend of mine. Roger gave me a little more information about it today that I wish to share with readers that may be interested in it…

Roger’s Uncle Curt was with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) in Japan during WW II when a small troupe of Japanese engaged them while they were trying to get some prisoners released. This is when this remarkable incident occurred. Years later, in his last days before passing away, Curt wrote down this story on a piece of scrap paper. It was amongst several things Roger inherited from his uncle. This is Roger’s little Remembrance Day tribute to his Uncle Curt, based on that story.

November 11, 2006 in Culture, History 5 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Peter Frey exhibition

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I am very pleased to introduce friend and fellow-printmaker Peter Frey. Peter is presenting Threads and Fissures, an exhibition of his photographs and prints at the Capilano College Studio Art Gallery.

Opening reception: Thursday, November 9th, 4pm – 7 pm.
Exhibition runs November 9th until December 5th, 2006
Gallery hours: 8:30am – 4:30pm Monday – Friday
Capilano College Studio Art Gallery
2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver, BC
A Google Map for directions.

Here is Peter’s artist statement:

I began expressing myself through art quite late in my life, when I was living in India, where I studied and practiced a form of yoga called Darshan Yoga – Yoga of Perception. Ideally, when one is in a state of perception, one is fully engaged and the thinking mind is quiet and the exquisite richness of life, the inner and the outer world have an opportunity to touch us.

For about 4 years in India, the photographic camera took me from the inner world of meditation outside into fields, villages and mountains. Photography became a means to look at and admire the world in a simple and direct way. When I left India, I began to study photography in a formal way, both in New York and later in Chicago, and my work became more self-reflective. I began to include my own body in the work to speak of the relationship between the self and the world, between the inner and the outer.

I have chosen for this exhibition a few works from that period. Most of the work shown has been made since becoming a member of the art institute here at Capilano College.

I have used the word ‘threads’ for one of the names for this show to indicate the idea that there are common threads, or themes linking together these pieces, which span a period of about twenty years. But the threads that link and hold together, that hold my attention fully engaged in my creative work, sometimes break.  These threads that link become the fence that separates, what has been flowing easily is interrupted, what has been whole breaks – and I am disappointed. But there is an other side to such breaks, fissures, cracks, ‘mistakes’, which is perhaps expressed when we speak of breakthrough and which Leonard Cohen has so beautifully put in this line:” there is a crack in everything, that’s where the light shines in”. A crack is also an opening.

Recently I attended a sweatlodge, where volcanic rocks, heated in a fire, are used in the lodge. One of these rocks, redhot, had a crack halfway through, and it was through that crack that the red glowed with the greatest intensity. In a way the material disappeared and only the light remained, and one was able to look deep inside. Just like the intense glow of this rock soon dimmed, moments of creative intensity, of deep connectedness, of glimpses deep inside the fabric of something, rarely last very long and the sense of loss, the breaking of this connection, this fissure, I think can be seen in some of the figures that appear in my work.

A word about my choice of materials and medium:
Printmaking provides a means to create very fine textures. For my eye, fine texture acts in a similar way as very fine fabric, it is sheer and does not cover. Like a veil it allows us, hopefully, a chance to see a little inside, behind the surface, behind the picture plane. In this way I also see the series of leaves shown here less as forms and more as openings, or windows through which one might gaze into a landscape that is at once minute and very large in scale.

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Spontaneous Alchemy: OM/MO 2002. ©Peter Frey, monoprint

UPDATE Nov.9th: We’ve just come back from the opening. It’s a stunning show with a large body of work, consisting of photographs, mixed media works and inkjet prints. If you are in the area or coming to town, do come see it! Here’s Peter next to his piece Leaf from Petals/Reversal, an inkjet print with coloured pencil:

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November 8, 2006 in Art Exhibitions, Art Institute (Printmaking), Other artists, Printmaking 9 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Goldsworthy: Rivers & Tides

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I’ve just finished viewing the DVD Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides. Wow! It is very beautiful, very inspiring and I want to view it over and over again. I’ve admired Andy Goldsworthy’s work in books, magazines and online but have never seen it in real life. This film captures that feeling of being there and seeing how the artist creates from materials in nature, often allowing the creations to be destroyed and returned to nature. Viewing the ephemeral seems to arouse a spiritual response in the artist as well as in this viewer.

I know this film has been out for several years, but by fluke I came across it in the library and hope to renew it and watch it a few more times, especially the extras. It is gorgeously filmed by Thomas Riedelsheimer with the support of YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (surprise!) and other film production companies. I suggest a search on the web for images of his work if interested. The above one that I’ve captured is somewhat similar to one in the film, and which I really like because it reminds me of a petroglyph. If you haven’t seen Rivers and Tides, I highly recommend it!

November 6, 2006 in Films, Other artists 13 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

November

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November is here. You can tell by the weather, the heavy heavy rainfalls, the wind, the dark and gloomy days. Indoors never felt so good.

Turning inward means that my art work is continuing to develop in an interesting way, so I’m happy about that. But in other art related news, I’m disappointed with some news, as are many of my fellow printmakers who submitted work last spring for jurying to the Krakow Print Triennial. I found out second-hand from an artist who was was in Krakow for her solo exhibition there (she was the Grand Prix winner in 2003) that about 350 artists were selected from over 2500 applicants. Only three Canadians, unknown to us, were accepted and none from the US, a rather unusual result.

Rejection is par for the course but our biggest complaint is that there has been no communication from the triennial organizers about whose work has been accepted, which is unusual for an organization with an excellent reputation in the past. Funding issues, perhaps? Anyway, I had another look at the Triennial website and their list of winners, noting that one of the prize winners is a Canadian, one Cécile Boucher.

The dark, cool and damp evenings make us non-TV watchers a little more inclined to cuddle up on the sofa and watch a good movie. We’d been to the library a few days ago and scoured through their collection for some good selections so last night we watched one choice, The Constant Gardener. We enjoyed the love story, the exciting drama of attempts to expose the corrruption of the pharmaceutical companies in Africa, and most of all the film’s beautiful and horrible scenes of northern Kenya and its very colourful and musical people. Here’s a Quicktime trailer.

Now I’m awaiting the family’s arrival any minute for a visit and dinner, another pleasant diversion away from the miserable weather beyond the rain-washed windows.

November 4, 2006 in Being an Artist, Films, Other artists, Print Triennials 12 Comments »