Jun 05 2012
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Finding Round in a City of Squares

Toronto is square, at least that’s how I experience it.  It’s built on a grid and that makes it one of the easiest places to get around.  The buildings are variations on the square–stacked, squished, glass, metal, stone, brick.  I’m trying to think if there’s anything with a dome downtown.   There is the circle at Queen’s Park.

The Vessel, Ilan Sandler
Taddle Creek Park, Bedford Rd, Toronto

The area around the University of Toronto has been filled in, old houses torn down so that the real estate can move up. As I walked north of Bloor, I found a sweet surprise, not just a green space but a round structure.

In it is an unmistakably round and feminine piece of public art.  A bit of relief.  Water falls gently from the rim around the top.   The proportions are so believable that it could be a pitcher on a table.  A giant pitcher left behind for a giant?  A giant pitcher to hold the rounder side of a whole city?

It’s just cool.

Love,

Laura

PS–for more information about this park, Taddle Creek Magazine has a great article.

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Jun 03 2012
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ROM Space: Made for Us

ROM from the east on Bloor Street

The Royal Ontario Museum is about collections.  It’s about old stuff.  And if you ignore the second floor (with its taxidermy and dinosaurs), then you might be impressed like I am by how “human-centric” the collections are.

It’s all about us.  What we make, what we use, how we look.   It’s like a kind of tagging through the ages.  For instance, the glass cases in the Asian galleries contained Buddha and bodhisativas and demons and men of all kinds.  Even a few women.  And the purpose of the images?  To confirm the goodness in us, or to make a mark, a lasting impression?  He was there and because of this icon, the future will know him.

I’m overwhelmed by this impression in the Greek and Roman galleries.  Figure after human figure.  Marble heads.  We love looking at ourselves.  I’m just realizing it.  Our purpose seems to be us.  We worship the human form (okay, Islamists might not). There’s something about the human image and our drive to capture it.  Does a piece of the soul stay with the creation, as some cultures claim?  Perhaps it’s time to burn my self-portraits.

ROM, Egyptian Pre-dynastic. Two figures found in the mud and reconstructed. they are thought to represent grief.

In fact, I found two figures of women, very expressive, in the Egyptian gallery whose souls seemed to still be present.  They are dated as pre-dynasty, and were found in the mud of the Nile.  I love them for their gestures, so unfathomable after what, 4000 years?

It’s all about us.  What we collect, the stories we tell, the clothes we make, the tools we use, the we adorn our bodies.  We stand as individuals, as votives representing something, something that we in turn, love to look at.  I’m wondering what that might be.

Love,

Laura

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May 31 2012
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The Buddhist Boys

6 luohans on the first floor of the ROM, the Asian culture galleries.

I only went to Toronto for the day, and and only had a few hours to spend with the boys.  To make the most of the trip, I decided to get into a Buddhist frame of mind so that I might draw these fellows with more understanding.

My friends, Dan and Pam, recommended reading J. Macey’s Active Hope and I started it a few weeks ago.  Honestly,  it’s a tough read.  Over the weekend I listened to Pema Chodron’s Bodhisattva Mind.   From this small immersion, I got the message to stay in the present and be open.  Easy.

The boys are  a group of six monks carved in sandstone from the Song Dynasty (1000-1200 AD).  The religious term for them is luohan.  The ROM blurb didn’t explain much about them but from my bit of research, they were a kind of spiritual warrior for the Buddhist faith at a time when it was experiencing persecution in China.  These luohan continue a communion that started a millennium ago.  So cool.

The luohan aren’t boys, I discovered, but strong men in many senses.  Calmness is under appreciated in our culture.  As I drew them, I felt the power of it.  They were centred, unique, compassionate, yet there was muscle under the cloth.  These boys could walk, and sitting still, I imagine, wasn’t a passive activity for them either.

Luohan with a dragon at his foot, ROM.

What surprised me as I drew, was that I began to see monks through  the sculptor’s eyes.  Each man was a model to be cajoled into a pose and flattered into an attitude which would serve both personal vanity and the cause of  religious teachings.  The sculptor may have been a monk himself (sorry, have to assume “he”); he would have had to answer to an abbot of sorts, to the traditions of his craft and religion, if he could separate these.

From the dates, it’s likely that more than one sculptor would been involved in portraying this group, yet the style and details are incredibly consistent.  The stone blocks had their own grain and inclusions.  Not perfect or painted over.  So the execution was very important.  Imagine sanding the heads and faces, the lips and brows, so smoothly–polishing into the stone to bring out the flesh.  The tension between body and spirit.

I would date the Buddhist Boys at the ROM again, but will confess my crush may have shifted to the artists who created them.

Love,

Laura

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May 27 2012
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Stephan B MacInnisDaily Daily Studio Photograph. May 25, 2012.

Daily Studio Photograph. May 25, 2012..

Apparently I’m not the only one who sees the studio as not just a space, as an extension of self.  Abstract painter Stephen B MacInnis is taking a photo every day of himself in the studio.   Cool stuff to check out on the link above.

May 27 2012
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My Date with the Buddhist Boys at the ROM

While London is a culturally active city, Toronto has the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum.

I find it’s worth taking the train to spend an entire day at either place.  The ROM is my target for this visit.  The last time I was there, I didn’t sketch much but wandered the endless collections until I felt the vertigo and had to get off the ride.

My mission this time has focus.  Find the Buddhist boys.

Baran Mong’s sketches from the Royal Ontario Museum, July 2011.

In the World Culture Asian galleries, there are a couple of collections of Buddhist statures.  whether standing tall or seated with a round belly, they are painted, gilded, jeweled.  Then there’s a group of what looks like plain, unembellished limestone monks.

Another artist, Baran Mong, has also found the boys and included one among his really spirited sketches.

My impression of them from my last trip was that they were very hungry souls, and that the artist had rounded out their faces, which to me, didn’t match the thinness of their bodies beneath the robes.  While the statues might have been commissioned as propaganda (I’ll try to find out more), the artist shows an exceptional compassion for his models.   Maybe even love.

What delights me is that they’re real men, young and quite frankly, thin and not so perfectly spiritual as The Buddha.  Imagine your meditation or yoga group carved in stone.  Then imagine sitting before the that group, each a singular expression captured in stone, and meditating on that — 500 to a 1000 years later.

Love,

Laura

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May 23 2012
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Purposing My Space

A corner of my studio.

The walls  in the studio are white and it’s not hard for me to leave them bare.  The space is clean, nicely lit, but it’s nothing special. It’s a spare bedroom, for goodness sake, in a boxy apartment.

On the weekend of a recent Artists Studio Show, I had the opportunity to see the studio spaces of ‘real’ artists.  People painted in their basements, in the attic, off the kitchen in old mud rooms.  One had taken over what looked like a family room.  Even with that space, the room was filled with shelving and storage bins, a long strip of corkboard on which ideas were pinned.  A work table took up the centre of the room.  Another artist, working with fibres and textiles, had moved her sewing machine and materials storage structure into a storefront art gallery.  That woman had the best, albeit temporary, space.

I’ve worked in the window of a dry cleaners, hemming slacks and putting in half-pockets and new zippers.  I’ve painted in the studios of Zavitz Hall on the campus at University of Guelph, in the underground mall at Lakehead University.  I’ve gone into my daughter’s school and drawn the classrooms, and  picked up drawing lessons at in the old rooms above London’s The Arts Project.  All public spaces with a purpose.

With a studio in my home, the space remains private for the most part.  One doesn’t invite strangers in, or have them peering through a window.  The room has been reclaimed from being a mere storage area, filled with clutter.  It’s clean and I have space in there to think. Yet I find more distractions.  It’s a little too easy to leave a project and start lunch early.  The dressmaker Judy has more presence in there than I.   And she can be intimidating.

Yet, it feels like summer with the weeks of unseasonably warm weather we’ve had.  Maybe it’s time to wander and gather ideas?

Love,

Laura

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May 20 2012
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Space: room for the imagination

In the pews at Knox Presbyterian Church, Stratford ON (from
http://presbyterianrecord.ca/2011/01/01/knox-stratford-ont/

Like many, I grew up going to church.  The church we attended was built in a stripped-down cathedral-style.  These Presbyterians had a vision and the means to build.  Lots of  carved wood, of course, but also a soaring ceiling with massive white columns.  The sanctuary wasn’t overcrowded with images, as sometimes happens.  The light from the windows was beautiful, but again, not dark. The overall effect left room for the imagination.

My parents put me into art classes from a young age.  The first ones were held upstairs in the local hockey arena.  I can’t believe we all sat on the rough floor where the dances were held and beer spilled, and drew for two hours.  There was lots of space and light, but it was grotty space.

Then the local art gallery took over and the art classes moved into their space.  Forgive me for saying, but I found a new spiritual home.  Sure, I churned out the crazy activities the instructors had planned, but then I escaped.  I wandered the galleries.

The galleries held public space in an intimate way, the lighting often low.  A bench might be the sole occupant of the centre of the room.  A child could move and turn and be active.  Stand back, approach, retreat, wonder.  I had no idea what the images meant, but they evoked a broad range of feelings and showed a world that went beyond the homogenous biblical narrative in the church sanctuary.  I became an equal partner, though a very young one, in the discourse between viewer and image in the gallery space.

I’m not afraid of space, of being alone in it.  I like the excitement, the possibilities.  I still find wonder in galleries, still experience culture and images with my whole body.  Can you imagine it?

With Love

Laura

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May 13 2012
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A Mother’s Day Story

Swan, pencil

When I became pregnant, my world shifted and tilted back towards art.   I picked up my pencils and took the lead. I knew where I was headed.

Swans at night, pencil and Mylar film

Stratford Park

June, July and August were spent in the park in Stratford, Ontario.  I walked the river everyday, sometimes at six in the morning because the baby inside me loved walking as much as I did.  Her dad framed up the pictures, and on weekends I set up my display of drawings and sold a few, then made a few more.

Over the past week, I’ve come to see how strongly the park figured in my pregnancy.   The river and huge, gnarly black willows, the swans and couples who walked hand  in hand.  The regular early morning walkers and the Sunday theatre-goers.   All summer long, the beauty filled me.

It’s been interesting to pull together the pictures from that time.  The physical skill of drawing is one thing; making decisions about composition and design is another.  What can’t be taught, or forced, is hitting a deep feeling so truly that it can be seen on the page.  Only one drawing came out as beautifully as my daughter did that summer.

Love,

Laura

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May 12 2012
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Recording my world

Grumbacher sketchbook cover

Give me  liberty, and give me my sketch pad.  It’s surprising how time flies, and how really interesting my mundane world is.  No fancy trips abroad, just everyday stuff.

Rock cut on North of Superior route, plan for print

I drew all the way home from Thunder Bay, with my friend, Cathy, driving.  I can’t imagine how fast my pencil had to fly to catch the views along the North of Superior route.  It’s breathtaking–the rock and lake.

detail of Algonquin Park sketch

I camped and sketched  in Algonquin Park until at night I dreamed only of the trees, of being on the trails with the undergrowth rushing past.

I sketch where I’ve lived–Stratford where Robin was born, Thunder Bay and Guelph where I went to university, and London.

The Green, Wortley Village

Guelph, along the river

View from room in Thunder Bay

Stratford Park

May 11 2012
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If it’s practice, is it art?

Jeanette, conte

Honestly, it’s all practice and that’s why I decided to study art so many years ago.  There would always be more to learn, more to say, better or different ways to express visually.   I started figure drawing at Ryerson in the Fashion Design program.  Of course, we learned to play with proportions, but the models were not stick figures.

Jeanette, conte

Matt, conte

Jeanette, conte

Jeanette, conte

Lately I’ve taken portrait and figure drawing classes with Hida Behzadi at The Arts Project.  There’s Jeanette and Matt, wonderful models, on page after page.

Green as I am at heart, I have used paper unabashedly  because it’s the only way to practice.  Large pads of newsprint covered with lines and smudges from little sticks of Conte chalk.

And always room for improvement.

Something totally different:  I learned about collage with Hendrikus Bervoets in an Art for AIDS International workshop.  What a fun and colourful way to get into a socially conscious groove.  Each one is a square but even squares can be interesting.

Stone Thrower

Fire and water

Monkey Love

Man on Fire

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