Inspiration

aquatic arts

October 17, 2024

One of my favourite pastimes is watching the swimmers from the bleachers at UofT’s Olympic sized pool. It’s like being at the theatre. Better yet, The Royal Ballet. There’s always that one swimmer that stands out, that moves with the grace of a swan. It’s the repetition that I find so mesmerizing. And the speed. And the effortlessness, as though water is her natural habitat. It’s when two swimmers move in tandem, like a choreographed dance that I am most amazed. Stroke on stroke, breath on breath; two perfectly synced flip turns. I leave feeling a small bit awestruck by what the human body can do.

eyes wide open

October 15, 2024

When you’re a walker you get to know your routes like they’re your friends. There’s the one with the massive pre-historic rocks. And the one with immaculate lawns and a mid-century modern bench. There’s the one where the wild flowers grow. The one where the old, aproned lady stares out from her window. And the one with ever changing graffiti. I know these routes, and I know them well. I pay attention to what they have to show me. A sinuous crack in the pavement; bikes chained to wrought iron; a choir of anemones in full bloom. It’s the walker’s eye. Trained to pay attention. William Eggleston has devoted his life’s work to shooting everyday street scenes and to finding beauty in the mundane. “Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly,” wrote the New York Times in 1976 after Eggleston’s first big exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Today, he’s widely considered the grandfather of street photography. His quiet, ordinary Kansas streets, shot in the late 70s and 80s, are not unlike the ones we walk today. Concrete, brick, trees and wire.

weird world

October 1, 2024

Maryam Riazi’s sculptural vessels looks like weird little creatures, monsters even. Imagine planters with spikes like dead man’s fingers. Or a six legged bowl. I see beaks and tails and protruding bellies. I like how pops of colour — yellow, turquoise, dusty rose –– weave their way into an otherwise earthy palette. Riazi grew up in the city of Shiraz surrounded by lush, verdant gardens filled with orange trees and blossoming flowers. Nature is a constant source of inspiration. Her work is beautiful and weird and otherworldly.

after hours

September 30, 2024

James Maroon is the pool cleaner for the 9/11 Memorial. I only know this because documentary filmmaker Josh Charow’s chose to make a film about him. Charow’s beautiful portrait made me think of all the millions of night workers paving roads, mopping floors, wiping turnstiles, baking bread that we don’t know about. All the quiet, unsung heroes of the night, the ones we never see and rarely think about, the ones who take care of schools and museums and airports while the city sleeps. Sometimes, in the depths of Winter I wake up and listen to the scraping of snow in the laneway behind our house and I know that tomorrow the path will be clear. “It gets dark in there sometimes, and you can lose yourself in there,” says Maroon of the reflecting pools. “But it’s pretty beautiful to see the sun come over the wall. It’s something that most people don’t get a chance to see.”

seaworthy

September 12, 2024

Noriko Kuresumi’s ceramic sculptures remind me of breaking waves. Makes sense given the artist’s fascination with the ocean and sea life. I also see ruffled fabric and spilt milk. “Don’t cry over it,” my Mum used to say. Spilt Milk, that is. Move forward. I find Kuresemi’s work vital and exquisite. She works in porcelain –– translucent and strong –– and she’s never taken a sculpture class in her life. Wow.

hands

September 2, 2024

The first (and only) time I sat down at a potter’s wheel my fingernails were painted a vermillion red. “Those won’t last very long,” is all my teacher said as my hands scrambled to centre the lump of wet clay enlarging before me. I’ve since learned that a manicure is wasted on a potter’s hands. Too much water, too much mud. I cut my nails short, and once in a while, I slap on some Egyptian Magic. That’s my manicure. I like my hands. They’re weathered from the sun and from washing dishes and bathing babies and dipping sponges in clay water. They’re weathered from planting marigolds in the summer (to keep away the squirrels) and forgetting to wear gloves in the winter. I like these photographs of makers’ hands by Marilyn Lamoreux. Drafting, drawing, painting, weaving. There’s toughness and tenderness in each image.

Paula

August 9, 2024

A few weeks ago, I brought home a piece of pottery from an artist whose work I’ve long admired. it’s a little blob of a chalice with rough edges and a gloopy glaze that makes it look like it was sculpted from melted marshmallow. “I’m a sloppy potter,” Paula said as I tuned over the vase to reveal an unfinished join and moon face base. “My work lacks integrity,” she added in a way that made zero apology for her lumpy rim and lopsided base. For someone who works painstakingly to smooth her joins, lumps and bumps, Paula’s attitude both inspires and infuriates me. My nine-year-old daughter brings home more polished work. And there it is. The child. That’s what I see. That’s what I am drawn to in Paula Grief‘s work and what I connect to in most art I like. A childlike sense of play and freedom and imagination. Clean joins and finished edges mean nothing in the absence of these key elements. Not caring about what other people think is the game changer. Paula doesn’t give a toss about appealing to a wide audience. “I make things that I think my friends will like.” Sounds like creative integrity to me.

twiggy

June 13, 2024

Our home is littered with things that were once one thing and then became another; a giant school ruler that became a shelf, a metal lamp shade that became a fruit bowl, a banged up old bicycle wheel that an artist friend turned into a wall hanging that resembles a bus. I love this idea that a person, and a thing can have many incarnations. (I hope to come back as a blade of grass.) British artist, Chris Kenny works with common place materials and turns them into poignant, and often humorous works of art. His twig series is so brilliant and weird. Tiny, delicate twigs re-imagined as stick figures dancing, stretching, jumping, pulling. There’s so much humour and pathos packed into each one.

I am my style

June 11, 2024

I was combing through the dresses in my wardrobe last week when I suddenly realized that I’ll never wear them again. A gingham slip dress, a Schiaparelli pink sheath, black frocks in organza, chiffon and moiré silk. There’s the lemon yellow vintage cocktail dress that I wore the night before I got married. I always meant to wear that one again. And the floor length Missoni, with its endless zig zag stripes that I wore with matching four inch stilettos to a dear friend’s wedding. And a tulle filled frock covered in cherry blossoms that my friend, Stephanie loaned me back when our waists were smaller and boobs perkier. I’ve had these dresses for twenty years, some even longer, and up until recently I’ve looked to that portion of my wardrobe as a place that I’ll return to when …. When what? When I feel the verve to wear the kind of outfit that turns heads, the kind of outfit that pairs well with dancing and witty repartee. Someone draw me a bath –– I’m tired just thinking about it. What I realized the other day as I searched for something to wear to a neighbourhood fête is how dated the “party” portion of my wardrobe is. For starters, most of my dresses don’t fit anymore. Not my body, nor my style. Fashion has always been a form of creative expression, and these clothes are no longer representative of who I am and what I want to express. A few years, a few big years, can change the way we dress. Change the way we think, look and feel. While I rarely go to parties anymore, I still want to up the ante when the urge strikes, and I still want to be able to draw from a pool of clothes that take me out of myself while feeling myself. That’s what a great party dress does. I’m not ready for linen tunics or the lilac cocktail suit yet, but I also don’t want my wardrobe to be a momento mori of a past life. It’s time to clear it out and make space for, I don’t know what.

mother & child

May 7, 2024

My earliest images of mother and child are the Orthodox Christian icons that I grew up around. I was drawn in by the colours –– vermillion, indigo and lapis lazuli –– and the shimmering of gold leaf. Once I was in high school, I studied art history and my visual references expanded to include Mary Cassat’s tender portraits, Henry Moore’s curvaceous sculptures and the hand carved wood figures of the Yoruba people. The darker side of motherhood –– The anguish, the heartache, the loss –– came in much later by way of Louise Bourgeois’ red gouache drawings and the harrowing self portraits of Frida Kahlo. We look to art to feel connection, to find meaning, to feel less alone in the world. Two artists whose exploration of motherhood resonates with me today are Lisa Sorgini and Madeline Donahue. Although I’m beyond the stage where my babies are glued to my body like mussels on wet rock, I still have a visceral response to Sorgini’s closeups of tiny hands gripping hold of their mother’s fleshy bellies, and multiple children hanging off multiple limbs. Cesarean scars. Swollen nipples. Baby’s bottom or woman’s breast? It’s hard to tell sometimes. Her breathtaking images are all skin and sweat and shadows. Madeline Donahue captures a similar tenderness and intensity in her brightly coloured depictions of everyday life. One image shows a mother painting the window sill while one child crawls at her feet and the other uses the hem of her dress as a swing. It’s distance from that phase of motherhood that allows me such a full and free and visceral connection to it.

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