more art, not less.

this is from a campaign in the UK. sadly, it is just as applicable here.

NEW EYES, a new exhibition i co-curated

NEW EYES: the Feature Gallery is intended as a supplementary exhibition to the Bridge Songs event that took place June 15-17 at The Avenue Anglican Parishes. The theme for this year’s Bridge Songs was NEW EYES. It was presented as an opportunity to wrestle with ideas of renewal, the tension between novel and traditional, past and future, youth and aging, and the displacement of the old by the new. Artists were invited to explore revision, both metaphorically and literally; to breathe new life into an old world, and even old work. Creatives working in multiple media – visual, literary and musical – participated.

Once again this year, the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts generously partnered with us and provided their exhibition space for this project. The four artists chosen submitted work that explores the idea of vision, both external and internal, in addition to strong narrative elements.

Michael James’ photographs function as memorials. They picture spaces that once were home, now abandoned, or soon to be. They are sometimes filled with the remnants and traces of experience, sometimes awaiting new tenants or visitors. There is a real sense of human presence, and a recognition that these forgotten people had importance, value, dignity. Who were these people? What was their story? Where did they go from here?

Tyler Enfield’s digital prints are symbolic representations of childhood, mythological in scope. Children are often represented in film and literature as either innocent in the way they perceive the world, or as wise beyond their years and more attentive to the subtleties and nuances of relating to the world and each other. These pieces are at once otherworldly – almost like fairy tales – and portentous.

Sara McKarney’s rubbings and traces document the history of humble objects; objects which are anchors for stories shared between people, between family members. The physically memorialize the human presences and activities that occurred around the table. They are living documents, fragile yet rich with meaning.

Hilary Mussell presents a singular book, a bestiary of fantastic human/ animal hybrids. They challenge us to reconsider how we perceive ourselves, as well as our fellow creatures. They are strange yet also strangely familiar – mythical and somehow familiar. The journal format becomes a catalogue, but one that is diaristic and personal in tone.

These artists ask us to look at these images and see with new eyes, to pay attention to these stories, to reexamine the ways in which we remember and imagine. To remember that there is always the human presence, and their compelling stories.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

Edward van Vliet

Aaron Vanimere

Curators

The opening is Thursday, June 21 from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. Please join us. If you can't, please do drop by and take a look.

it all comes down to this

i meant to write another poem
but it always seems to come down to this:
language and its secret pockets
where we fill the spaces
with questions –
how to speak words like Truth, hope, joy.
how to uncover a lie. heal a wound.

and so i wait.
unsure if this is strategic or because of fear.
or perhaps it is neither. perhaps
it is the thought
that it simply couldn’t be true,
that this story has been embellished,
that the eyes have too much kohl,
the mouth too red, nails
too exact, something not quite right.

still, i want to convince you.
i must. and this is the weight
words carry. they carry life or death.
they hold blessings or curses.
they catch the light or
remain dull.

so i keep looking for the right words
for the right time, polishing them and
preparing the settings --
that you might wear them and keep them close,
that they might rest next to
your skin, that they might
find a home in your story.
it all comes down to this.

what is a saint - leonard cohen

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a  saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.

Cohen, Leonard. Beautiful Losers. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,1966. 99.

praying drunk - andrew hudgins

Our father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise 
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,
Poof! You're a casserole! - and laughed so hard
she fell out of the bed. Take care of her.

Next, confession - the dreary part. At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They're like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they're beautiful. But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven't shot one yet.
I might. When I was twelve, I'd ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats. It's hard
to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough. The rat won't pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it's just a rat. My garden's vanishing.
Perhaps I'll merely plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?
        I'm sorry for the times I've driven home
past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist, it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I've thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair -
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff. I'm grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things
I'm grateful that I've never had to do
without. I have confused myself. I'm glad
there's not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another elephant's ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean almost anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives. Don't look! Don't look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away. Line up, they yelled. Let's go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is - let it be so - a form of praying.

I'm usually asleep by now - the time
for supplication. Requests. As if I'd stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And also, I want vanishing cream. You know -
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he's there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that's clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It makes me think,
sometimes,of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me.

Hudgins, Andrew. "Praying Drunk" Upholding the Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 265-267.