Blog Posts

Free Store Boogie at the Cortes Island Recycling Centre

3/13/2015

It’s a damp, foggy January morning as I drive toward the Recycling Centre on Cortes Island. Swirls of mist dance through the treetops. Roadside vegetation drips with moisture. At the recycling centre turn off the gravel roadbed is pockmarked with puddles. The weather isn’t stopping the work on the centre’s new Free Store though, at least not today.

Howling windstorms did shut things down recently. Near hurricane force winds downed trees and power lines putting the volunteer carpentry crew out of a job. But now, the project is back on track. Before I come around the final corner, through the trees I can see new wood and the bright red metal roof.

After depositing my recycling in the appropriate receiving shed for glass, metal, plastic and paper, I decide to check on Free Store progress. I’m not the only one. Charlotte stops me with a cheerful smile to tell me how pleased she is to see the building coming along.

Charlotte has a proprietary interest. Until the old Free Store was closed due to thoughtless kids who vandalized the place, Charlotte had a firm hand and eye on store management. In her early eighties, Charlotte found new meaning in life when she became the chief volunteer at the store. Four times a week, Charlotte appeared to sort incoming drop-offs, put usable items on display, stack ‘library’ shelves, supervise volunteer helpers, and generally maintain a semblance of order. Now she’s at loose ends until the doors reopen.

Though the old free-store felt cramped, dark and… smelly under its tin-roofed extension of the recycling shed, it usually hummed with the coming and going of price-wise islanders. In fact, the temporary absence of the Free Store has left a gaping hole in the social and economic fabric of the island. And not just for Charlotte. Many of us have been suffering Free Store withdrawal. For one thing, what to do with all those shirts and dishes and chairs and books and computer keyboards that don’t meet current needs? Even more importantly, where does one find a free shirt, skirt, sweater, blouse, smock, clock, pot, pan, skeins of wool, embroidery thread, plastic duck, lucky puck or set of Funk and Wagnall encyclopedias when you need them?? And where else can a person spend half an hour among friends and neighbours, engage in community gossip, try on clothes, compare notes about Free Store ‘finds’, and tap dance on a rainy day?

Tap dance? Why, of course! On occasion, twenty people have been known to crowd into the Free Store on a stormy day. On one such moisture-laden morning, a pair of red tap shoes caught someone’s eye. Before long a tap routine was rocking the place. If my memory serves me right, several of us embraced our tap fantasies while hail drummed accompaniment on the roof.

It may have been that very day I found a fabulous, almost new fleece jacket and a box of picture frames. It could also have been the day that I dropped off an overstuffed wingback chair and a designer jacket from my business-woman-in-the-city days. It might even have been the day I returned several skirts I’d taken the week before, which, after a good wash, a shake and a try-on, didn’t say ‘fashionista’ as I had hoped.

Fortunately, the Free Store has an excellent return policy. If a selection doesn’t fit, blend with the household colour scheme, doesn’t stand, tilt, bend or spindle the way you had in mind, it’s returnable, no questions asked. The Free Store is also renowned for their “Shop-Lifting” policy, with a sign to make sure you appreciate the opportunity, “Shop Lifting Encouraged”.

Charlotte and I reminisce for a few more minutes before I make my way through the rutted mud to the new Free Store. Today there’s a crew of six on the job, tacking tarpaper over the plywood sheathing and securing the last few pieces of metal roof cladding. Ken and Derek are up on ladders with tarpaper draped over their heads. I call out but it’s obvious no one needs a distraction. I take particular note of how things are shaping up. I have a proprietary interest too. I sketched an artist’s concept of the store from the architect’s plans. My drawing is being used on posters and progress reports.

We’re all volunteers including the architect. Crew bosses and their crews of foundation formers, wall framers, tarpaper tackers, roofers, painters and artistic decorators -- volunteers every one. From the ground up this is a community endeavor. Where possible even the materials have been acquired locally. Local sawyers milled trees from the site and a big flatbed truck wheeled in one day laden with hefty fir beams and posts.

The new store will be larger and brighter. A number of skylights and small windows provide a shower of light. On this day the openings are framed in, some windows and all of the doors have been installed. It’s interesting to see my sketch becoming a three-dimensional object. But there’s still work to be done and probably a month before its ‘business as usual’ in Charlotte’s department.

I’m looking forward to it. For one thing I need some new serving plates, and I need a couple of simple, loose dresses for summer. And there’s that bag of clothes and household odds and ends I’ve been putting aside to drop-off. I’ve been missing the islander folk and gossip too.

Sometimes I feel that everyone visits the Free Store. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve seen people recoil at the very thought. My mother’s not too keen. “Some of those clothes are unwashed,” she says in an appalled whisper. But on the whole, it’s a broad cross-section of the island population who embrace the something-for-nothing concept, from the wealthy to the truly needy. Returning summer visitors often hoard items over the winter, just so they can make a Free Store trip when they’re back on the island. It’s one of the island’s tourist attractions!

There’s the serendipity of it too. A city retail shop often has only one kind of item in an array of sizes and colours. At the Free Store, the stock is singular and unique. The daily turnover is such that the store never has the same selection from minute to minute. Habitués know that Free Store success is a matter of simply being in the right place at the right time. The difference between “Guess what I found,” and, “You should have seen the ceramic bowl, Dire Straits LP, little black dress.... I was this close to picking up!”

Some folks wait like vultures as new treasures come through the door. The occasional free-for-all has resulted, though a general policy of ‘first sighted and landed’ determines ownership.

For newcomers, the concept that everything in the Free Store is free is hard to grasp. Me, I took to the idea like a clotheshorse to a clothes rack. Why not exchange things I no longer need for things I do need? Why not take all my older books for someone else to read? Why not dispense with a closet full of clothes that no longer fit?

The Free Store reduces the clutter in my life. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by ‘stuff’, I can do a quick sort and send the least used, the tired, the in-the-way, the too small, the too big, the too bright, the just too-too... to the Free Store. While I’m there I can look for a spindle, a trindle, a tisket, a tasket, and, maybe a basket too.

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Drawing... A Meditative Practice

3/1/2015

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Suddenly, I caught a swirl of movement. I swear I saw the trees gather up their skirts… In the deep green behind me, the trees have been dancing. With an abashed giggle, they straighten up again.

***************************
My breathing deepens. I am quieted. I sink into the setting. All sounds become both clearer and part of a larger sound-scape that includes my breathing, my heartbeat, the soft ssshh of my hand moving on textured paper, the swish of a brush in water and the warm click of pencils as I rustle in my art box. I become conscious of a hum that slowly differentiates into bird calls, a distant dog bark, a whir of insect wings. As I continue to sit, even the heat, or cool moistness, seems to have a physical weight that snuggles me.

I am drawing.

This is a summer morning of watercolour sketching & drawing. My meditation begins as I gather my sketching tools, and continues as my focus becomes fully attuned to the process.

From my Cortes Island studio, I have walked through the damp coolness of an alder, hemlock, cedar and fir forest into the bright openness of a clear-cut that slopes south and east. Logged only a few years ago, I still remember the lofty trees and sheltered trails. Orange peel fungus provided bright and unexpected ground colour. How different the clear-cut with bent, misshapen and broken forest remnants poking up. I embrace these survivors of the logger’s ruthless choice. I appreciate drawing them.

At the same time, I welcome the open landscape that is now beginning to fill in with new growth. Salal, Oregon grape, trailing blackberry, huckleberry, bracken fern and fireweed are energetically making their presence known with fresh leaves and flowers. Small hemlocks push up, offering their droopy dew laden topknots to the morning sun.

I usually stop for a few moments and take in the full expanse of the clear cut…looking down to the small stones and humus rich earth at my feet, along the small trail that winds away through the vegetation, slowly taking in the multiple layers of landscape and distance all the way to the misty blue of the mainland mountains, filling my eyes and heart with light and colour.

One of the most powerful results of a regular drawing practice is a vividly enhanced visual awareness. I see so much more, reveling in the shapes, forms and colours, all so varied and dazzling. Enhanced awareness firmly translates to ‘being’ in the landscape. Being leads to being ‘seen’. Quiet contemplation, focused by my drawing practice, plants me in the landscape. I begin to feel a deep intimacy, kinship and sensitive awareness. In my stillness, the land and its inhabitants accept me. Small animals almost run over my toes and insects investigate the colours on my palette. Birds alight nearby.

I recall how sinuous little reddish mink have danced along beach logs, unaware of my presence, only to react with a start when only a few feet away. I’ve enjoyed their lengthy scrutiny from their round dark eyes… until, with a leap they pivot off in the opposite direction.

I have often felt carefully observed. Of course deer and other animals observe me, but I have also felt a mutual awareness even from the trees. I believe they sense my observation and appreciate the attention. There is a mutual vibration of simple acknowledgement. “We are here and so are you.”

One spring, drawing kit in hand, I sat myself among the moist mosses and decomposing wood fibers of a rain forest hideaway. Nestled in my ‘studio’, I began drawing the dripping scene; all tree trunks and rain-wet growth against a mossy granite bluff. Quiet, so quiet. Slowly I became conscious of a disturbance in my ‘morphic field’. I began to glance around. Nothing appeared to be moving but the odd feeling continued. I began to turn around quickly to surprise my observer. Suddenly, I caught a swirl of movement. I swear I saw the trees gather up their skirts… In the deep green behind me, the trees have been dancing. With an abashed giggle, they straighten up again.

To me, it seems an obvious corollary -- close observation encourages a deep appreciation. Individual rocks, trees and wild violets, become so intimately observed that I am moved by their subtle changes. I’m thrilled when these tiny ground hovering violets flower, and enjoy their delicately ribbed heart-shaped leaves. And I empathize when caterpillars devour the fresh alder leaves. If a tree I’ve drawn loses a limb or is toppled by the wind I feel a surprising sense of loss.

In this world I am also enveloped in a rainbow of colour. This morning the colours initially seem subtle and undifferentiated, but within moments, the scene drapes itself in colour.

Even in the winter, or any time of year, the range and strength of colour fills my soul. Today the colours run from pale mauve to rich Indian reds, cool green-blues to soft yellows. Whether I am focused on a small object or allowing my vision to gather the widest expanse, the range of colour is always extraordinary.

I realize I used the word ‘extra-ordinary’ when what I’m describing is ‘ordinary’ - in every sense. What is extra-ordinary is that we rarely see what is ordinary and visible. What is even more extra-ordinary is ‘seeing’ beyond the visible and being fully present to all our senses. What a joy to allow myself the time to simply sit in contemplation of all these marvels – to scratch away with brush or pen, to smell the spring morning filled with propolis from the budding maples, hear the catch of wind in grass, a rattle so different from the sigh of wind in fir tops..., recognizing the cacophony of spring compared to the silent heat of August.

Drawing is a mindfulness meditation, a full engagement with the present moment. It has nothing to do with how well you or I draw. It is the practice of “bringing our attention to”, allowing all other concerns, thoughts, feelings to fall away, to focus fully, joyfully on the process of observing, feeling, being. This is my practice.

And sometimes the trees will dance.

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Gumboot Technology & the New Alchemy

2/15/2015

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This article was originally published in the Watershed Sentinel, Environmental News from BC and the World, in 2006. I have edited it slightly and given my gumboot technologist friend a measure of privacy by calling him, Rick. As follows:

Walking with my friend Rick on his island property is an education. On a granite bluff overlooking the north end of Georgia Strait, a major water and wind channel on British Columbia’s inner coast, we are examining Rick’s inventive use of the recycled and reapplied detritus of our material culture. When we crest a small rise, Rick gestures overhead. Thirty feet above us, the yellow-tipped propeller blades of a Canadian Forces Argo radar plane are turning slowly in a light air.

“This is my wind generator. I’m still adjusting the pitch of the blades and I need to tinker with the alternator to have it accept the irregular wind speeds. But when the tinkering is done, the generator will supply up to 30% of our household power and charge batteries… Eventually even charging an electric vehicle I call my ‘wind powered truck’.”

Environmental consultant, architect, author and ‘gumboot technologist’, “from away back”, Rick is an accomplished friend of the earth. With soul restoring creativity, he is also turning his ideas and concerns to practical purpose, in his own backyard.

In fact, our local recycling centre was the scene for my first conversation with Rick about these important matters. I’d found two old doors that I saw as a potential worktable and a door for my studio. Rick offered to transport my ‘treasures’. “If I can help put these doors back to work, I’m all for it,” he said.

As we loaded the doors into his pick-up, I noticed at least a dozen buckets filled with something that looked like used motor oil. “What on earth are you doing with those?” The unabashed answer, “I’m converting used oil to diesel for my tractor.” This sounds interesting.

I tell Rick that sounds like gumboot technology at work! I’m a fan of what I’ve begun to call gumboot technology, a term to which I’d been introduced by another islander.

Rick is a bit hesitant though about applying the term gumboot technology to his own endeavors. ‘Appropriate technology’, ‘sustainable’, ‘medium’ or ‘low technology’, those are terms with which Rick is more familiar, and prefers. But I like ‘gumboot’.

Its simplicity first caught my ear when I heard that term used at a casual social evening of island ‘in comers’ and ‘old timers’. ‘Old timers’ being folks of the 70’s back-to-the-land influx. ‘In-comers’ are folks who have made the leap to ‘island life’ in more recent history, and just learning old-timer wisdom.

In a cozy room we in-comers were hunkered down on the floor helping the kids make paper airplanes and snow flakes. Dull scissors were frustrating our efforts.

Henry, old-timer, checked our progress. “What you need is some gumboot technology.” He wandered off and returned with a canning jar. He placed the pair of scissors over the rim, a blade on either side, and dragged the blades out against the glass edge a couple of times.

“There you go, gumboot technology in action,” Henry said handing me a sharper instrument.

Gumboot technology? Why not? I’ve been lost in all the ways that writers, thinkers and doers have tried to describe that which runs counter to the latest, and said-to-be greatest, modern technology. Gumboot technology? Sustainable? Earth friendly? Simple? Appropriate? Minimal? Yes, absolutely.

It’s the image of a gumboot that really catches my eye and ear. The gumboot (wellington, welligog, beach boot) is a simple, common utilitarian item of coastal footwear with a minimum of moving parts, generally worn by those with more interest in function than fashion.

I agree that Rick’s enterprises are decidedly more complex, and rely on more elaborate technologies. Still, for Rick it is function over fashion. It’s about arranging for the needs of daily living with sheer grit, ingenuity, creativity and minimal reliance on systems that may endanger the planet.

Up on the windy bluff Rick describes the various components that make up his ‘wind machine’. “You’ll notice that I’ve used a Ford pick-up axle for the propeller shaft. The brake drum is still on.” I’m offered a demonstration of the braking still available to slow the propeller blade, if needed.

Rick continues. “The tower, that was a lucky find. I happened to pass a crew dismantling an electrical tower that had to come down. It didn’t take much, a couple hundred bucks to get a ton of galvanized framework into my truck, enough to build two towers. Now take a look at that alternator. It’s out of an old light plant, but I’m thinking of using a large truck alternator instead. In this project,” Rick reveals, “the only new part is the gear box.”

What of the propeller? How did a radar plane propeller find its way from the far north to a wind generator on a west coast bluff?

Rick grins. “Finding the stuff is half the fun. I picked that up from my favourite military surplus. It was a spare part in the original propeller kit for the Argo. It even came with x-rays of the blades and a balancing report. The blades weigh within a few grains of each other.” What Rick is telling me is that he has some very finely balanced generator blades, with credentials, and they came via military surplus. Turning the tools of war to a peaceful cause gives Rick special satisfaction.

We continue to watch the blades turn lazily. I know this end of the island well and it’s not always so calm. Winter storms can build up winds of 50 - 70 kilometers, occasionally rising into the 80’s or even more. Rick can count on over 100 days a year of winds exceeding 20km, sufficient to generate 2 to 4 kilowatts of power. In Rick’s insulated, energy-efficient and conservation-minded home that can almost supply all his electrical needs.

Moving away from the bluff, we follow the flow of energy downhill to the house. Here, individual components that direct and manage the electrical flow are also recycled.

The inverter, salvaged from an administrative office ‘downsizing’, is a computer at heart. Rick has modified the inverter, actually reprogrammed it, to shunt electricity into his household grid, according to which source of power is presently available. If there is a brisk wind and the battery array is topped up, the inverter switches the household to that source. If the batteries are low, the inverter will switch to the commercial electrical grid.

The materials and skills needed to assemble the electrical components and get them working together is quite ‘high-tech’ in my book.   What is gumboot about it is the creativity and ingenuity of producing a personal solution beyond off-the-shelf components and reliance on the larger, industrialized and bureaucracy-ridden system.

Rick is vehement on this point.   “There is so much out there that can be used, ...the sheer volume of waste, the sheer volume of good discarded materials that we throw away.” This appalls him. He shakes his head. It feels good, to practice on his own terms, on his own farmstead, the healthful and earth friendly concepts he’s been extolling for two decades. “I call it my therapy.”

‘Therapy’ is, after all, an antidote to the mental and physical pollution of living in a world where we can rarely meet our own practical needs, where we believe we can afford to waste.

There’s more “therapy” inside the house. In a corner of the main floor, I discover a new, yes new washing machine! My surprise is short lived. This new machine operates on about 60% less water than a conventional agitator model. Nearby, and somewhat hidden by a rack of drying clothes, a large dark masonry structure of about six feet (2 meters) high by 3 feet (1 meter) wide. This behemoth is the wood furnace. In keeping with Rick’s approach, it’s constructed of firebrick and, wait for it, discarded kiln shelving.

Kiln shelving? “From a toilet factory kiln,” Rick enlightens me. “A very large kiln with large high tempered shelves. Very convenient for my wood furnace”.

As I move closer I note that the furnace still radiates a modicum of heat eight hours after the morning fire has gone out. Wood heat can consume a lot of forest, but Rick’s two story R2000 home uses about four cords a year. In a home designed to retain and circulate heat efficiently, the furnace does quadruple duty. In addition to direct heat, clothes can be dryed, as noted, there’s always plenty of domestic hot water including hot water for in-floor radiant heating and, “provides a great oven for baking!”

Rick opens a second metal door above the stove box, and puts a hand forward. “It’s still warm from this morning’s fire,” he gestures for me to test the oven. I put my hand out and it’s enveloped in gentle heat. Images of buttery baking powder biscuits and roasted potatoes make my mouth water.

“And in here,” Rick points to the interior of the lower fire box, “I have two old metal radiators.” Two discarded cast iron radiators of the classic molded style are affixed along each side of the box, and tipped slightly forward to form an open ended inverted ‘V’ over the fire.

“As the water in the radiators is heated it moves to these exchangers.” Rick points to two polished steel cylinders mounted on top of the furnace. “The water is actually so hot coming out of the fire that I have to step it down a degree or two before it goes into the floor pipes.” The spacecraft-like heat exchangers are recycled from a computer cooling system, “when computers were large and hot affairs”.

Beneath our feet, I am taken by what I mistake for a tile floor. “No, it’s coloured concrete,” Rick says, “in which I’ve embedded coils of plastic tubing for in-floor heating.” This in-floor system has high heat retention too, holding heat for as long as 20 hours in winter. I can imagine the comfort of warm floors and the convenience of coming home to a house that is still warm after hours away.

In this house there is no end to adventurous concepts. A work in progress, I find new experiments at every turn. A roof top solar collector, synthesized from recycled pulp mill steel pipe, percolates unattended; cycling additional heated water into the house.

On an earthier level, Rick is exploring the use of composting toilets and natural waste water systems. In this case, Rick bought basic manufactured composting toilets, and made his own adjustments to improve efficiency. The toilets have been up and functioning well for four years. “I actually had some dialogue with the manufacturer who was initially interested in my improvements, but I guess I went too far. I’m on my own again.”

The two household toilets are built on outside walls and empty into a peat filled bin accessible from outdoors. About every six weeks, the bin is dumped into a dedicated compost pile. Internal temperatures in the pile can reach a bacteria-frying 145 degrees centigrade, producing garden humus in twelve months.

Within the farms two acres of alder bottom and built-up raised beds there are vegetables, flowers, and a recently planted and fenced orchard, “down about where those deer are roaming,” Rick points out. All to be irrigated with household wastewater.

Household wastewater or ‘gray water’ is kitchen and laundry water, the “rice and noodles”, as Rick calls it. “The waste water system will eventually provide for most of our ornamental and tree fruit gardening needs. But I’m still working on that one,” Rick admits. A recent addition, a rock walled rainwater cistern, collects surface run-off for food crops.

Rick has had some frustrations and the occasional ‘failed’ experiment. One such endeavor -- how to restore household ‘gray’ water to usable purity for irrigation -- has not succeeded. A glass walled enclosure of plants and bubbling tanks isn’t working to its full potential... Rick is disappointed but not deterred.

For me, that’s gumboot technology… a willingness to experiment, appropriate cast-offs, re-design, and try and try again. Gumboot technologists are the new alchemists… challenged by mysteries -- intrigued by quirks and inspired by ‘good finds’. Gumboot technologists solve mysteries, integrate systems, turn tools to other tasks, reduce waste, and create comfort and health in their lives with their own hands and hearts. “It’s my therapy,” Rick says. It’s a therapy that has immediate, practical applications and outcomes for Rick, for his family, for me and… for the whole planet.

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Life Drawing

2/2/2015

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In the focused hot-house of a life drawing class, I learned that all drawing is life drawing, a sensitive and aware examination, a silent meditation on light falling, forms responding, spaces colliding, weight impressing, colors flowing… whether human form, or leaf, or bird or tree. All drawing is life drawing…all drawing is a meditation on the novelty of physical form and it’s subtle reveal of what lies beneath.

People often visualize life drawing as it’s seen portrayed in classical paintings…a carefully contrived tableau, the artist fully clothed, a nude model clutching a drape revealing less than more, while the artist’s retinue of friends, family, servants and pets look on.

I’ve described an actual painting, but my experience is of less ‘decorous’ settings. I’m more familiar with an art school or contemporary studio which, in my era, the 60’s and 70’s and later in the 80’s, provided a much more democratic arrangement…with models and students, of both genders, all ages and sizes, lounging, sprawling, climbing, sleeping, reading, chatting, smoking and even nursing their babies.

For a sheltered teenager my first encounter with this experience was eye-popping!

Among the models were pregnant models, older women, younger men…models with extreme postures, excess weight, or very thin. Models with potbellies and hairy legs. Models with muscular tummies and delicate ankles. Models with great abs and tight buns, male and female.

Models, often artists themselves, enjoyed employment that required no equipment beyond a robe and a willingness to stand, sit, lean, and lay down in a myriad of positions while wearing little or nothing.

As students we discussed and rated them based on degree of flexibility, ability to hold a pose, ability to re-enter a pose following a break…their ability to sink into a stance, weight, arm and leg positions exactly as the pose began. They were rated on ability to hold an extreme pose as if running, falling, dancing, boxing…on ability to move through a sequence of related poses in short bursts, ideal for gesture sketches.

We loved models with unusual body shapes whose imperfections offered insight and artistic challenges.

At first the casual nudity was unnerving. When my first model dropped her robe I glanced around restlessly, uncertain where to look. A straight-laced family with little connection to the arts didn’t prepare me for a nude woman, or…lord help us…a man, a man standing within a few feet with nothing to hide any part of his anatomy. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that, at age fifteen, I sharpened several pencils to the nub before I could go back to my easel and draw.

At the easel, all inhibitions fell away. Life drawing revealed life, male and female, tight muscled, flabby breasted, large bellied, tall, slim, grizzled, bearded, crippled, supple, comfortable, awkward, confident, older, younger, pale, ruddy, light and dark.

This intense introduction to the human form started at a night school class at the then Vancouver School of Art in the city’s downtown core. Attending art classes required a bus from my home in south central Vancouver, down Victoria Drive into the under belly of the city along Hasting street to Victory Park. The art school hid just beyond the upper slope of the park, a long block from the bus stop.

In early evening I was often the only person on the street. At other times shadowy figures would loom from the darkness and mumble something about “looking for a girl”, or “needing a drink, my friend”. It all seemed very grim, streetlights casting only a pale glow…until I entered the art school, light full and dazzling, with movement, color, busy hallways, paint splattered floors, large panels of splotches and stripes and dots. Noise, confusion…life.

In this environment I found my home. My whole self welcomed the first command…that we ‘see’! See the muscle under the skin, the bone under the muscle, the bone where it erupts from joints and backs and hips, bruising the skin with sharp shadows.

In a flurry of flying pencils and charcoal, I pressed into the paper, feeling the textured surfaced capture the carbon, leaving bold smears that echoed human form, sometimes with a single line, sometimes with hatching and smudging too.

I learned to “see”.

I learned to “see” weight press down through the spine, through hips, falling in a scientifically predictable arc through knees, shins, ankles and feet, compressing arches and splayed out through toes.

I learned to “see” flesh moving, contracting, flexing, expanding, rigid.

I learned to “see” repose…relaxed, untested, unstressed limbs draped over the arm of chairs, flesh falling away from bone.

I leaned to “see” light, light that reacts to skin in unexpected greens, yellows, mauves, blues and even rich full reds. I learned to see “turning colors,” that amazing phenomena of a third color where light and shadow meet, where chin resolves into the neck, where arm joins shoulder, where bridge of the nose slips away toward cheek, where cheek turns under the jaw.

I learned to “see” the miracle of reflected light, the light and color cast onto an arm, a breast…mauve or sky blue from a window, passing through a turning color of green, into the warm pinks, yellows and gold of indoor light.

I learned to ‘see” that flesh and bone surfaces can turn in more than one direction at the same time, and I carefully studied and drew real bones to follow plane changes.

I learned to “see” foreshortening, that strange quality of an object, a thirty-two inch leg for instance, to appear only twelve inches long when viewed from an oblique angle. That perspective therefore, applies to bodies as much as to buildings.

I learned to “see” that light and shadow define form, that lines exist where sharp light and shadow meet, that line is an arbitrary convention to define shape. I learned to “see” contours, the line that doesn’t exist but which defines the outside extent of the form, from top of the head down around the ear, following the neck to the shoulder, down the arm, over the rise of the hip, zipping gracefully along the thigh, around the knee, down the calf, scooting by the ankle, nipping at the toes, then up the other side again to the head.

I learned to “see” negative and positive space, those magic voids and not voids that define visual relationships, that define flesh against background, that define what is and what is not, what is hip and what is chair.

I learned to “see” the spaces between crossed ankles, the space ‘between’ created by an arm bent at the elbow, hand on hip, the void created by a body in space, the space that is not the body…to see the space that the body occupies, or an arm, or a foot.

I learned to “see” what was there, rather than what I imagined or believed to be there…that an eye is not two half circles enclosing a large round object but a complex of folds and ripples, of concave and convex forms, of indentation and protuberances, of soft surfaces and reflective ones…that no two eyes are alike even on the same face.

I learned that all drawing is life drawing, a sensitive and aware examination, a silent meditation on light falling, forms responding, spaces colliding, weight impressing, colors flowing… whether human form, or leaf, or bird or tree. All drawing is life drawing…all drawing is a meditation on the novelty of physical form and it’s subtle reveal of what lies beneath.

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Here we go......

1/23/2015

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Thanks for joining me. I've been expanding, commenting, offering suggestions, asking questions on posts all over Facebook. Time to jump in with my own thoughts, notes and excursions in whatever form they may take.

I'm going to start by posting an unpublished article I wrote about eight years ago. It was inspired by a photograph a friend showed me of glamorous diners on an Atlantic Crossing, on one of those magnificent older style passenger ships, a ship that predates the current 'cruise' industry. As a member of an International Gourmet Club, Bett's 'cruise' offered a culinary journey with the famous French chef Paul Bocuse, cooking classes and exotic dinners of many courses. Oddly enough, it was simply the presence of one particular person in the photograph that inspired this literary observation..., a Mrs. Cargill. Please read on:

Mrs. Cargill

I have a confession to make. I have a Cargill connection. It’s a bit tenuous, but still, the connection is closer than I suspected. And it’s put a face on that corporate giant called Cargill, that pervasive transport and ‘agricultural’ monolith which has swept across our Canadian and world landscape changing what and how we eat.

Lets step back a few years..., twenty years ago to be exact. At that time I was working as a publishing consultant and food stylist on a cookbook project, a collection of recipes and reminiscences from a famous Canadian prairie restaurant. This restaurant inhabited several locations over the years, beginning with a few tables in the authors home on the edge of the Porcupine Hills. When it came time for the food photo shoot, this rustic, screen doored, two story, wild rose surrounded, weather beaten home-place overlooking a aspen filled coolee, could not be reproduced in the cold confines of a big city photo studio.

So it came to pass that for an intense week in a hot July the production crew and a team of cooks laboured in Bett’s southern Alberta home. All in all we created some remarkably evocative food photos with a plethora of farm raised corn, zucchini, potatoes, squash, poultry and a side of beef. With the addition of a wagon wheel table, an old side board, wire egg baskets, collectible plates and serving trays, checkered table clothes, canning jars from the cold room and a cheese wheel secured from a neighbouring cheese factory, the setting burned a hole in nostalgia. Barn-board walls and a window view of dry grass and southern Alberta sky provided additional ambiance for a cornucopia of mouth watering ranch food. And yes, we ate it all.

Late each day, when the hot house atmosphere of location shooting was complete and all was quiet in the house, Bett and I would spend the evening chatting and looking at her photo albums. A devotee of all things food related, Bett’s albums were filled with pictures of food and the people who enjoy it. Lively scenes spilled from overflowing albums. Weddings, birthdays, holiday celebrations and community events filled each photo, happy people chowing down on Bett’s legendary menu. Local folks from town, area ranchers, friends, celebrities from near and far including as I was often reminded, John Wayne and Bing Crosby.

Several albums documented Bett’s annual trip with an international gourmet club, each photo accompanied by a commentary on the who’s who of the culinary world, with chefs and dinner guests seated before plates of sumptuous food served in extraordinary settings, here castles in Spain, there sun burnt palazzo’s in Italy.

Pointing at a photo, Bett might say, “Here’s Prince Vladimir of _________ with Paul Bocuse at Paul’s restaurant in Paris. And this is Lord and Lady _________. They were so funny! Oh, and here’s Mrs. Cargill at a dinner party on the SS France”.

Mrs. Cargill? Of the Alberta Cargills? “Yes, Mrs. Cargill, you know, the grain people”.

I leaned closer to peer at this startling image. What I knew of Cargill, “the grain people”, was of an monstrous corporation devouring small town Alberta. The Cargill centralization of grain collection and distribution, and the large Cargill granaries, three and four times the size of garden variety grain elevators, were reducing once viable towns and farms to dust.

I looked down at the 4 x 6 inch photo, a patch of bright colours against the album page. I wanted to know what people look like who are building an agricultural and marketing monopoly and in the process altering our food and our relationship with its production? Pretty much like you and me. Here I saw a prim, well dressed, gray haired woman who looked a lot like my mother, if my mother were to be found dining with European royalty on a luxury liner in the mid-Atlantic.

Fascination bound me to the page. I asked Bett to point out Mrs. Cargill in a series of opulent ship board dining photos. Despite the wealth and array of exotic food, Mrs. Cargill continued to look very much like you or me. And why not. She was someone’s mother and grandmother, a wife. Still and all, it was difficult to reconcile this proper older woman with the wreckage of lives and rail lines that I knew to be occurring.

Only a few weeks prior to finding myself perusing photo albums in an Alberta farmhouse, I had visited an artist friend in north central Saskatchewan. Magda had hopes of creating an ‘artist’s colony’ in the remnants of a small town decimated as its elevator and spur line met the Cargill juggernaut. Magda bought a church for $200, and another friend picked up the community hall, complete with sprung floor, for a song.

Despite the depopulation, my visit to Magda’s coincided with a community reunion and by the afternoon of the second day, the nearby playing field was filled people and long tables sagging with potato salads, meat loaves, buns and biscuits and breads, juices and jams and jellies, hot dogs and cold cuts. Over 300 people had come home on a summer afternoon to eat and talk and play ball. Just plain folks sitting around on lawn chairs telling tales and remembering. I noticed eyes drifting now and then to the elevator and the line of trees where the tracks had run.

When I stopped in at Magda’s four years ago, the elevator and railway tracks had disappeared completely. Magda had the town to herself and it’s been so since the last of the hold out old-timers passed on. Magda struggles to make ends meet with a couple dozen sheep, a small wheat field swamped by nearby agribusiness over spray, and a museum of how it used to be.

It is easy to feel nostalgic for the demise of a small town in the vast Canadian prairies, for a way of life that kept people in touch with the land. But there are even larger issues at stake here, issues that are large and frightening because Cargill and like-minded corporate interests are reaching far beyond a monopoly in transportation. In the late 90’s I came across a news release published in the “Ram’s Horn. It was and is, a clarion call for our attention to eroding food safety and control. This corporate press released trumpeted the intent of Cargill and Monsanto for form a worldwide joint venture first to create..., “a system that links biotechnology research and development from seeds through processing to the customer..., with plans to explore future opportunities to expand the partnership into agriculture and food.”

As we know, these pronouncements have largely come to pass. More centralization of transport, terminator seeds, cattle cloning and genetic engineering..., a process that violates species and organism boundaries.

I was initially taken in by the propaganda of genetic engineering; that genetic engineering is merely a step beyond natural selection, a tweak here and a tweak there, and voila! a marvelous pest free, self fertilizing, sunshine producing agricultural marvel. I considered the media reports that extolled GE and its offer of abundant and overflowing crops for the starving masses. But, when I learned how genetic engineering introduces genetic material into a cell that would not normally accept such an addition I was shocked. It is done with great violence.

My mind flashes back to Bett’s photo album and pictures of her gourmet dinner companions. I see Mrs. Cargill lifting a fork to her mouth, glancing unemotionally at the camera. Granted, this Mrs. Cargill may have had little to do with the decisions being made to dramatically and violently manipulate our food. Somehow I envision the people behind such threatening science, such mono-focused, bottom-line oriented thinking as dark-suited power brokers with leering grins. What intrigued me then and intrigues me now is a frightening suspicion that the Cargill’s are real people, who travel and eat, just like you and me.

Copyright Dianne Bersea

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