The artistry of jewellery — my necklace of many colours

Of all the pretty necklaces I have, there's one that stands out. It's the one that elicits comments from strangers in the cashier's line at the grocery store. It's the one that could be worn with almost everything, it has so many colours. But it's not a necklace you wear every day.

I never try to describe it because a description just naming its parts and trying to explain how they're put together can't really do it justice.

What do you think? (Be sure and click on the photo to get the full effect.)

As so much of my beautiful jewellery is, this piece was chosen by Dan. He often tries to buy work by local artists. This one could be but he's not sure and he thinks the chances are just as good that it's not.

Wherever she is, I like to think of the artist who made this coming into her studio one morning and seeing a small handful of jewellery-making materials on her workbench — beads, stones, little medals and medallions, wooden shapes, small metal leaves and blossoms, bits of chain. Maybe she's moving to another studio or maybe she's just in the mood to clear everything up and make a fresh start.

She decides that before the day is over, she's going to create the most beautiful necklace she's ever made and she's going to use every single element in front of her.

On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong and maybe she planned this necklace carefully — with a sketch and a measuring tape and a colour chart. Maybe somewhere in her portfolio is an exact drawing of this unusual necklace, that has so much character.

One of our former priests, Father Roberto, is a joyous, exuberant Italian. He's a musician and an artist and every time he saw me wearing this necklace, he had to break off whatever spiritual task he was involved in to exclaim once more on the artistry and the use of colour and imagination and composition that had gone into its creation.

"This is art," he would say, with such delight.

Father Roberto has returned to Italy. I miss his high spirits and his loving nature and especially his appreciation for art and music and beauty.

The necklace grows more beautiful with age. We'll grow older together and hope we can live up to each other.

Mary Pratt: brutal and bloody, domestic and warm

We are a family that gives each other books for Christmas. And for birthdays, Valentine's Day and anniversaries. Or for no reason or no special day.

We have way too many books already and it's awfully hard to think about parting with them, something everyone finds themselves doing at some point. Our problem is, we have no trashy books. We have the classics and books by or about people we know. We have art and history and architecture and fiction and biography. We have poetry and photographs and, of course, cookbooks.

One day I wasn't feeling well and I set out to count all the books in the house to take my mind off my illness. I was approaching 2,000 when I got distracted. I think I had to go lie down.

Even with all these books, Dan goes to the library at least once a week and comes home with a stack of books. They all get read.

One of our books from this past Christmas is the Goose Lane edition of Mary Pratt's paintings, published in conjunction with her recent touring exhibition. It's called Mary Pratt.

We went to see her exhibition when it was here in Halifax and although there are many more pictures in this book than we took with our own camera, for some reason we feel a stronger connection when we took the pictures ourselves.

I shared some of the pictures on Facebook last year. Here they are, with my comments. (I haven't reminded you for awhile to click on the photos. For these ones especially, it's nice to see them big.)

Her paintings are beyond real. They're often brutal, often bloody. If it's not blood, it's something that makes you think of blood.

She often paints food, during preparation, before or after meal-time, sometimes raw and just killed. Or maybe in a beautiful bowl or sitting on lace. Often, the food is on foil-wrap or plastic wrap or waxed paper. (The model you can see through the doorway is serious and hauntingly human.)

This is a picture of a wedding dress which was made by a friend of the bride and which hangs on the bride's bedroom door. The marriage is very happy. It reminded me of my wedding dress, also made by a friend — my friend, Joanne Lamey — also hanging on my bedroom door! (My dress is a little nicer but has a little in common with this dress.)

A large cod, in all its gutted glory, delivered to the pristine garden of her home. She liked the contrast. On the right, a butchered moose.

Pictures from the genteel home where she was raised in Fredericton.

It may be that her exhibition is still showing somewhere in the country. You could look it up. One way or another, I do recommend this beautiful book — even though I've been told that my jelly looks prettier than hers. What do you think?

I think she'd be amused at the thought.

Mary Pratt, sitting with her paintings.

I loved looking at your dishes, Your Majesty

Her Majesty celebrated a birthday today and in honour of that, I'm going to show you some of her pretty dishes.

These beautiful pieces are part of the exhibition in The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. There are also paintings, antique exotic furniture and other random beautiful things. We visited the gallery last fall and found a nice combination of art and history.

We start with a gravy boat and move on to a tureen:

gravy boat

tureen

tureen and extra pieces

I would serve tea every day if I had such beautiful tea service sets as these:

forget-me-not

I love to set a pretty table and I don't mind being a little flamboyant but maybe this would be going too far.

What would I serve on this platter? Fruit, I guess. The nachos probably wouldn't be appropriate here although I think I see red peppers – and a tomato.

And what would I use this for?

mystery piece

Or this?

mystery piece 2

I think it's safe to say that none of these beautiful pieces is dishwasher safe so being the practical person I am, perhaps I'll just be happy to look at them and leave them on Her Majesty's shelf and let her worry about them.

Meanwhile, we're definitely art lovers but William and I always grab the opportunity to have a little rest on a comfy bench:

But I know what I like

Here's some art:

Top to bottom: Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir

We saw these paintings at an Impressionist Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I found it very exciting to see them — yes, because of who painted them but I also genuinely loved the pictures. I don't judge Art by whether I would hang it on my walls but I would definitely be happy to live with these ones.

One of my favourite pictures is hanging on our wall. Robert Pope was a young Nova Scotian artist who sadly passed away of Hodgkin's Disease at the age of 36 in 1992. I had fallen in love with his art holding small photographic slides up to the light. I was editor of Atlantic Insight and I commissioned a story about Robert and his art. I was a big fan.

He is best known for a significant body of work exploring his experience of healthcare and healing as a cancer patient. These paintings, which he produced for his large solo show at Dalhousie University Art Gallery in 1991 were later exhibited nationally and internationally at over 65 venues.

One Christmas, Dan gave me a rental of a Robert Pope from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The rental was for six months but I couldn't give it up so it became a permanent part of our household.

Three years ago, there was a retrospective exhibition of Robert's work at the AGNS. I kept expecting to hear from the curator, asking for our picture to be part of the exhibition but the call never came. Maybe they don't know we have it.

I looked for it online and I can't find the painting but I found this:

This is called "Study for the Harbour" and it is very clearly the predecessor of our painting.

Lynn and I went to the AGNS last week for a little outing. The exhibition we saw is called The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design 1968-1978. We didn't have a lot of time and probably didn't give it the attention it deserved — or maybe we did. But if we had given it more time and taken it more seriously, maybe we'd have appreciated it more.

I did like the 36 photos of corner stores in Halifax. It was fun to see how many I could recognize and I was particularly interested to see how many of the stores opened on the corner of the building so they opened on to two streets. Here's an example — this is near where we lived years ago, downtown. (It's not part of the exhibit):

There were a couple of whimsical pieces — like this one:

And this one:

But a piece we noticed right at the beginning looked kind of like this:

Not exactly though. There were a couple more stripes but this is the closest I could find. Pretend there are a couple more stripes.

We tsk-tsked and moved on. A few steps further on, we saw the same thing again, this time very low on the wall, almost on the floor. We turned the corner, chatting and remarking on another piece when — you guessed it, there it was again. It didn't take us long to figure out that the repetition of this picture of yellow and white stripes was a statement of its own. Not that we had any idea what that statement was.

Of course it opened a conversation about Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire:

This painting — bought in a very controversial move by the National Gallery in 1990 for $1.7 million — would today sell for $50 million.

Go figure.

When it comes to Art, I try to keep an open mind and I always like something to think about.

Art: reminding us of Life

I've seen a lot of movies in the last several months. I assumed by the time the Oscars came around, I'd have seen most of the ones that matter.

Not so though. The Oscars will be handed out this coming weekend and even though they nominate more films than they used to, I still fall short.

Of the eight films nominated for best picture, I've seen three.

The eight are:

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

The three are:

Brooklyn

Spotlight

And The Big Short

I'm not sure any of it matters any more as The Revenent is, apparently, going to clean up.

I didn't see The Revenent by choice. I had read and heard too much about it. It's grisly; it's brutal, unflinching, raw. It didn't sound as if it were made for me.

One of the most powerful pieces I read about it was written by an Indigenous woman, Sasha LaPointe, Coast Salish/Nooksack, and was titled ‘Bring Me The Girl’: Why ‘The Revenant’ was Hard for My Friends and Me.

Powaqa’s face is empty as she is violated, as the French captain stands behind her, as she is shoved against the tree. Her face is wiped of any emotion. I have goosebumps and feel lightheaded when I think of it, the absence of fantasy. There is no Hollywood, choreographed rape scene. No big fight, no shrieking, no scratching, no scrambling to get free. There is only the reality of that expression. Those dead and empty eyes. The face of a woman taken over, defeated, if only for a moment.

I hope The Revenent is worthy as it seems likely it will win best picture, best actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), best director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), best cinematography, costumes, hair-styling and makeup, production design. . . (I'm just going through the list of everything it's nominated for.)

And if it does win everything in sight, I hope everyone who goes to see it will begin to see the world in a different way. That's one of the purposes of Art.

Her face reminds us that there is a highway in Canada known as the Highway of Tears, named after the many disappearances of women (mostly indigenous) reported along its vast expanse. It reminds us of the large numbers, the cases of assault against Native women. It is facing generations of surviving, of historical trauma, of memory distilled into a short scene and watching it release from within our bodies and float out into the world.

A sculpture garden with both bronze and wood

A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends posted a photo she had taken at the University of Arkansas which she was touring with her college-bound son. The photo was a sculpture made of wood, twisted into cone shapes with doors and windows, about 12 feet high. I recognized these sculptures although I had never seen them before.

In the summer of 2013, our family was in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of the stops on a meandering road trip. Our prime reason for being there was the Basketball Hall of Fame, our second Hall of Fame in as many days. Yes, we had come from Cooperstown, NY, where we enjoyed a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Both were fun in different ways. The Basketball Hall was much more interactive and William got to work off some energy there and have lots of pictures taken.

William keeping the great rivals Michael Jordan and Larry Bird separated.

When we left the Hall of Fame, we were walking on a quiet street in Springfield when Dan led us into a pretty park/courtyard. We discovered we were in the company of some old friends. We were in the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Garden at the Springfield Museums. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) was born in Springfield.

Sculptor Lark Grey Dimond-Cates, who is also Geisel's step-daughter, created the endearing bronze sculptures of Dr. Seuss and his most beloved characters for the Springfield Library & Museums Association, located in the heart of this city which is on the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts.

Here's Dr. Seuss with The Cat in the Hat and other characters in the background and below.

"You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."

As we stopped to look at The Lorax and to read the inspiring inscription that accompanies him, we got our first good look at the large sculpture made of twisted wood that was behind him.

When we did our research on the sculptor, we found he was Patrick Dougherty and that he's made these wood sculptures all over the world. I can't begin to describe them all so please go have a look at them. They're really interesting!

This is the one at the University of Arkansas – this photo is from the website:

I'm glad to have a chance to look back at another of our enjoyable trips but I also appreciate how it came about. I liked that Kyran Pittman – from Newfoundland but now from Arkansas – posted a photo with some sculptures that I, here in Nova Scotia, recognized because I'd seen his work in Springfield, MA.

There's an interconnectedness – a small-world-ness – that I find very enjoyable.

'. . .grandiose, tender, stormy, graceful and explosive'

I started this blog – Each New Day – on September 8, 2015. One of the things I said in my opening post was:

. . .I plan to write here often (I almost said “every day” but that puts a lot of pressure on me) so it’s a way for me to practice self-discipline. I preach self-discipline a lot so it’s good for me to practice what I preach.

I remembered having written something like that so I looked back to get the exact quote.

When I make a commitment to do something – like write every day – I take it very seriously. Of course the commitment is only to myself but that doesn't diminish it. I feel kind of bad if I get up in the morning and I haven't put up a new post the day before. I've become attached to the feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.

I never run out of subject matter but occasionally, I have a number of posts that want to be written but they require more work, more research, more thinking-through so I put them aside. It's times like that when I go to my archives or do a repeat from this very blog. That works too.

Having said that: we enjoyed a splendid concert this evening with Symphony Nova Scotia and a guest conductor, Jean-Marie Zeitouni.

It was Russian night and featured music by Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Igor Stravinsky. The highlight though was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Piano no. 1 in B-flat minor played by guest artist, André Laplante.

Our program pointed out that if anyone in the auditorium were asked to hum a tune from any piano concerto, chances are they'd come up with the opening bars of this concerto, "one of the most memorable melodies ever composed." It's true, it's very familiar. You could hum along almost throughout.

But no matter how many times you've heard it, nothing could compare with the experience of seeing/hearing a pianist like André Laplante performing it just a few metres away. I could quite literally feel my heartbeat speeding up during certain parts. He projected the intensity that he was feeling as he played.

By turns grandiose, tender, stormy, graceful, and explosive, this masterwork remains one of the best-known and best-loved piano concertos of all time.

It was also considered so difficult when first written that Tchaikovsky eventually made some changes that made it more playable. It's still considered technically challenging. André Laplante did a masterful job so much so that the usually proper Halifax audience applauded after the first movement, unable to restrain itself. (I've only seen that once before during a performance by the irresistible violinist, Giora Schmidt.)

Once again, we were uplifted and educated by an evening of fine music and I enjoyed writing this even though it might have seemed that I was making excuses when I began. Not at all. I was just talking myself into it.

The poet from Desolation Creek, Nova Scotia

I was thinking about an old friend, Alden Nowlan, earlier today when Dan and I were recalling a drive in rural Nova Scotia where we came across his birthplace. We reminisced a bit about his memories of the place. The conversation reminded me of a column I'd once written about him and I decided to share it.

We'd also been talking earlier in the week about rural poverty and I've written recently about vinegar and about molasses – so this column touches on a number of recent references.

It was written for The Daily News in 1990 and some of it is dated because it's about summer theatre productions way back then. I enjoyed remembering them anyway. Maybe you saw those productions also and if so, maybe you'll enjoy this too.

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Whenever poet Alden Nowlan was asked where he came from, he would answer – his gravelly voice booming – “I am from Desolation Creek, Nova Scotia.” There were people who believed him and went home to look it up on their maps, but mostly, people understood that he was speaking metaphorically and in general, they didn't really care much where he came from. The question was polite, a form of small talk.

Alden came from an area of rural Nova Scotia that was hopelessly poor. It was something he talked about often, the brutalizing effects of such poverty, the despair of the people who saw no way out. His friends heard many times about childhood winters when his family had only potatoes to eat, seasoned today with vinegar, tomorrow with molasses, the next day with simple salt and pepper. Served with tea. People loved to be shocked by the realization that one of Canada's most distinguished poets had left school in grade five to work in the woods and in the mill.

During the '70s, Alden published his only novel, Various Persons Named Kevin O'Brien.

It was the story of a young man growing up in rural Nova Scotia, dealing with a brutal father, understanding that he, Kevin, would have to escape from the life he was expected to live. As all writers do, he insisted that the book was fiction, based on some actual incidents and characters from his own life. Most people who had talked to him and listened to his stories believed, however, that Kevin O'Brien was Alden Nowlan and that this was the story of his own life.

When the book was published, I think he had long since come to understand, to sympathize with, and to have forgiven his father – “poor old bugger,” he used to call him. Alden had no fewer human failings than anyone else but he was a compassionate person, knowing that extreme poverty sours the soul, able to exorcise the bitterness he had carried because of the harshness of his own deprived past. He had made his peace with his father and through that, had made a start on making peace with himself.

Alden died in the early '80s. By the mid-'80s, Paul Hanna, a “theatre person” who had been active with TNB for a number of years, had completed a first draft of a play called Lockhartville (the fictional community where the fictional Kevin O'Brien was from), based on Various Persons Named Kevin O'Brien and incorporating some of Alden's poems. Tragically, Paul died very suddenly at the age of 37. The play was taken over by Terry Tweed who workshopped it with six actors provided by TNB. It was produced for the first time in New Brunswick in 1988.

This month, it's playing in Parrsboro at The Ship's Company Theatre. It's a wonderful piece of work. Acting, direction, set design – all are superior but, as everyone knows, the best actors in the world can't save a production if the writing is poor. This is Lockhartville's major strength.

The play is stylistically unconventional – the young Kevin O'Brien and the adult Kevin appear together, for instance – but it's also realistic and rings true. The poems, including two of Alden's best known – Ypres 1915 (pronounced “Wipers” as Alden's father pronounced it) and The Bull Moose – are incorporated with a naturalness that is nevertheless dramatic.

This is the second summer in a row that my best theatre experiences of the season have happened in Parrsboro. (Last year, it was To Far Away Places, the story of Joshua Slocum's round-the-world journey.) Of course, it's a novelty to go to the theatre in a beached, restored ferry – the Kipawo – but without a good production, that novelty would soon wear off.

It's no accident that the best theatre in Nova Scotia is being presented by the smaller companies. Nova Scotia is not unlike other centres around the country, where the larger theatres are floundering for lack of money, are at the mercy of board members whose first concern is the bottom line, and are forced into producing conventional, recognizable comedies and musicals, seen to be guaranteed moneymakers.

But both the Parrsboro plays I've mentioned, as well as a couple of others, are more than worthy of Neptune's main stage and I'd love to see them there. I won't hold my breath though.

Meanwhile, Lockhartville will play in Parrsboro until the end of this month. It's worth the trip.

. . .' a place to rest my weary head' *

We went to a concert on Sunday afternoon. I dragged myself out of my sick bed, put myself together and fixed myself up by increments: as long as I could stand at the bathroom mirror, I'd style a bit of hair, paint a bit of face until I had to rush back to sit on the bed long enough to regain my strength to carry on. When I was ready, off we went.

I was let off right at the door and went directly to my seat — no milling around in the lobby. My seat was on the aisle so I wasn't a problem for anyone. We managed to leave the theatre just as efficiently; we didn't see anyone we knew so there was no social component to our afternoon.

Was it worth it? Yes, it was. I wouldn't put myself through that for just anyone but it was a special concert. It was Symphony Nova Scotia with special guests, the Vienna Boys Choir. I figured I might not get too many chances to see the Vienna Boys Choir — at least until we go to Vienna — so I made the effort.

(I borrowed this photo from their visit to Manitoba last year — same conductor, and we recognize several of the boys in this photo.)

There's been a Vienna Boys Choir since 1498. Today, there are 100 active choristers who make up four touring choirs. When we were walking to our car post-performance, there were people behind us and one asked the other, "How do you get into the Vienna Boys Choir?" Of course, Dan and I — very quietly — said to each other, "practice, practice, practice."

In fact though, there are rigourous auditions, demanding academic standards, and yes, lots and lots of practice. The boys start training at the age of eight, start touring at 10, and must leave the choir when their voice breaks.

The Vienna Boys Choir was here to perform with Symphony Nova Scotia under the sponsorship of David and Margaret Fountain. The Fountains are very rich. This is their house:

Their money is inherited but they must be doing something right because they don't seem to be running short. (A couple of Christmases ago, they flew Tony Bennett in to entertain at their Christmas party but he was only for their invited guests. The Vienna Boys Choir was available to anyone who could buy a ticket — before they sold out, which they did very quickly.)

The Fountains are patrons of the Arts which I appreciate. I think the Arts should be generously supported and the Fountains have definitely come through with that. They have given millions of dollars to the Symphony, to Neptune Theatre, to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design — and to many other art-centred institutions in Halifax. They have things named after them too: the main-stage auditorium at Neptune Theatre, for example, is called "Fountain Hall." At least they have a nice name. I'm told they're nice people.

When I got home from the concert, I got back into my bed and was tucked in once again. As I lay there, feeling cold and shivery and very unwell, all I could think was how grateful I was to be in my warm — my heated! — bed, with extra blankets when I was feeling this way. I tried to imagine how I would feel if, instead of my bed, I was on the street. In a stairwell. Even in a shelter.

Because the homeless must feel ill a lot of the time. What must it be like, to feel the way I was feeling, and be lying on a grate on the sidewalk? I could hardly bear the thought.

"I wish David and Margaret would build a lovely place for street people to go, where they would find a soft warm bed with lots of blankets and someone to ask if there's anything they need," I said to Dan. Because he likes to humour me, he said, "And David could have wonderful music piped in and Margaret could hang beautiful art on the walls."

But I know that it's not David and Margaret's job to provide that refuge. It's our job, the people's job, working with our three levels of government to take care of each other, especially those who are most vulnerable. And a pleasant place with warm beds (and good music and fine art) is not enough — although it's something. What's needed is a comprehensive program to provide safe housing for everyone who needs it. It should be the most fundamental thing there is: a roof over one's head.

The former NDP government had launched a Housing Strategy which disappeared when the government was defeated in 2013. It's shameful that we can continue to walk down the street and step over the misery at our feet and pretend we don't see it.

I hope David and Margaret Fountain continue to give generously to the Arts and I hope they pay lots and lots of taxes. They can afford it and the rest of us should not complain about what we're chipping in too. There are many big issues that need taking care of but the next time you're sick and you're feeling cold and shivery and you snuggle deeper into your blankets, try to imagine yourself in a threadbare sleeping bag on the street. How can we live with that?

Just so you know: when I started writing about going to see the Vienna Boys Choir, I had no idea it was going to turn into a plea for affordable housing. Sometimes, that just happens.

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* I would love to be able to offer an attribution for this line but it seems that many poets and song-writers and story-tellers have used it in one way or another so I'm going to consider it to be in the public domain.