Coming to my Senses

It was a beautiful sun-filled day on Saturday March 18 when a group of about sixty gathered at the new Esquimalt Gorge park pavilion. Nestled beside the Japanese garden with a view of the gorge and the tall trees lining the pathway, I was privileged to be part of an unusual and uplifting event. Offered by the Centre for Earth and Spirit, the event aptly named ‘Coming to our Senses’ was a delightful sensual exploration of aliveness through song, dance, storytelling, reflective silence and the sharing of delicious locally crafted sustenance in the form of wild-gathered teas and wild-crafted culinary exquisite foods from Nature’s Chef Tom Kral.

Images courtesy Township of Esquimalt

We were honoured to receive the words of Knowledge Keeper Florence Dick who opened the gathering with stories of abundance in the Gorge and the practices of her ancestors on the land. I have so much to learn and love to hear about the ways the land used to be before settlement, and the ways the people of these lands were engaged with harvesting, storytelling and living in a good way with the more than human.

The program of four universal healing salves drawn from the research and teachings of Angeles Arrien (1940-2014) cultural anthropologist, educator, teacher, created an environment of reciprocal and participatory singing, dancing, laughter, stories, and guided communal contemplation. We raised our voices in harmony as singer Lael Whitehead taught and led us in song. We moved our bodies in previously unknown ways inspired by teacher and performer Amalia Schelhorn. We laughed as we spoke in unfamiliar language and were spellbound by the words of Storyteller Chiyokten Paul Wagner. I was honoured to offer the salve of silence which came to us as the wave of community connection that had swept us all up in the previous offerings, settled gently on the room.

At tables set with forest gifts of branches, lichen, cones, and needles, we shared Tom Kral’s wonderful menu which included delights such as seaweed crackers, dandelion pesto and cedar planked salmon. As we came to the end of this wonderful day we filled the space with the aliveness that had been activated within all of us truly coming to our senses.

Congratulations and gratitude to the Centre for Earth and Spirit members of the board and volunteers who made this all possible.

For the love of textiles

For some time now I have been gathering simple undyed cottons, linens and silks to use in my eco-printing and dyeing practice. There are so many ways to play in the world of plant created fabrics and today I stumbled across a delightful post from a woman in Sweden named Kirsi Manni. She writes about her 2022 project to create a beautiful embodiment of the history of flax in her village Siljansnäs using some inherited flax grown in 1920’s some she grew herself a collection of bobbins from flea markets and estate sales, then a simple saori loom to weave cloth. You can see her full story on Facebook just search her name, here is an image of her beautiful work.

Marking and Dyeing

This summer I gathered plant material from the land on which I’m living and began exploring the colours of this place. Some of the many Alder trees were felled early in the year offering the most striking bright orange from the inside of their bark. There are maple, arbutus, wild blackberry, nootka rose on the land as well all of which found their way into the printing process along with the inevitable piece of rusty metal for extra effect. What I love about this process is the unexpected nature of it, I don’t keep very good records and I probably could pay more attention to detail in my process, for me the joy is in the tactile nature of the practice communing with plant beings, receiving the gift of their beauty in a different way on the fibres of other plant beings thrashed, spun and woven into the cloth I’m working with.

cloth simmering in Alder bark water

Slow Stitching

It is important to me that the materials I use are natural and as much as possible chemically unprocessed. The exception is in the coloured threads that come into my work, I have not yet explored the possibilities of dyeing my own thread. Another aspect I love about my practice is its contemplative nature. I hand stitch almost everything, then I apply the old way of slow-stitching allowing the needle and thread to find its way around the markings on the cloth. I wrote a poem about that:

stitching

whenever i am anxious

i pick up a needle and thread

find a piece of textile marked with print of leaves

begin to stitch my way around each shape

my fingers move across the cloth

follow details

                        edges

                                    veins

                                                stalk

                                                            texture

i hold in my hands

            strands of living green beings

cut from their roots

            thrashed

                        soaked

                                    strained                                  

                                                spun

woven into fabric

this printed form

of shimmering aliveness

once sucked up sun’s warmth

                        breathed in clear air

                                                stretched and deepened

                                                                        its rich green fibres

needle pierces

            thread follows

                        patterns emerge

                                    from faint plant markings

rhythm moves each stitch

entices secrets to reveal themselves

soothing

            softening

                        draping

i am eased into stillness

Making

Then there are opportunities to bring together the textiles, the stitching, other gathered offerings from forest and beach walks to create art pieces. This is a series of elemental pieces – elements in the way of directions – I created this year.

Air – East

Fire – South

Water – West

Earth – North

Since I began this practice back in 2016 there has been a lovely resurgence of interest in eco-dyeing and I’m loving the opportunity to learn from others who have explored areas I’ve yet to discover. At the Craft Fair here on Salt Spring this year I enjoyed a great exchange of ideas with a young woman who is printing leaf markings on paper and making beautiful simple cards, book marks, art pieces. I often think this is one small way we can all take a step closer to finding right relationship with the earth and all those other sentient beings who share the spaces in which we choose to live.

My home is currently on the unceded territories of the Hul’uq’umi’num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples including the Quw’utsun, and Tsawout First Nation. I live on land that borders on the small Tsawout reserve set aside on the South end of this island known as Salt Spring. I am aware every day of my responsibility to the process being called reconciliation and as I grow to understand the stories of my own ancestors whose lands were enclosed and taken from them, I feel more keenly my presence here as settler.

Still meandering

So much time has passed since my last post, I won’t even attempt to recap the significant events I could have written about, I’ll just start here with what is on my mind.

Looking at that June 2020 post I’m inclined to share another video, this one from Haida Artist Robert Davidson, a tribute to Haida life now full of teachings about the potlatch.

My personal decolonization process started long before I had any real understanding of the horrendous impact of Terra Nullis, British colonization, stolen land, residential schools, the potlatch ban, missing and murdered women and girls, and the myriad ways colonizer settlers attempted to eradicate and continue to disregard the value and importance of indigenous peoples and their traditions. Living in the Yukon in the early ’70’s until mid ’80’s I witnessed the some stirrings of awareness in the general public when the Yukon Land Claim ‘Together Today for our Children Tomorrow’ was presented by Elijah Smith and a delegation of Yukon chiefs to Pierre Trudeau in Ottawa. In the early 80’s my job as City Clerk in Whitehorse put me at the table in conversations with the Kwanlin Dun to discuss the creation of a new subdivision in an area set aside for the Band, away from what was referred to as ‘whiskey flats’ where they lived at the time. That’s how it was back then, sadly still is in many places, the ‘indians’ lived in the poorest under-serviced annually flooded area of the town. I’m grateful as I look back at that time to have been working with a municipal council and administration prepared to recognize the need for change. Not to say there were’nt the occasional racist comments from council members about the plan, thankfully they were not in the majority. I carry a story about those discussions of the day the city’s Fire Chief attempted to impose restrictions on open fires in the new subdivision. The Band Chief listened to the Fire Chief before leaning forward at the table and saying “I don’t know about you, but I like to singe my ducks after I pluck them to get those quills out before we roast them up to eat”.

Fast forward forty years and the changes are multiple and visible. Not to deny there’s still much work to be done, just to say there is more space held by indigenous voices now. This video speaks to that, as does the video of the Kumugwe Cultural Society I posted for National Indigenous People’s day 2020.

This day is significant

because I am a witch I celebrate the solstice in ways that reflect my gaelic roots from Europe, and because I am a Canadian I celebrate this day with respect wanting to honour and recognize the indigenous people of Canada. It is national Indigenous People’s Day I offer this with gratitude

 

Our blue planet 50 years ago

Access to Emergence Magazine’s film Earthrise has been lingering in the mail on my computer awaiting a time when I had space to view and consider its importance.

“Earthrise tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.” (Emergence Magazine)

Thoughts and feelings range over a wide spread as I sit today Monday September 16, 2019 watching and listening to this remarkable film created from the accidental documentation of a significant event in the history of my time on earth. Some members of the crew of Apollo 8 resisted photography on the mission, their orders did not include capturing images of the earth, they were only to photograph the moon and her craters in detail. The iconic image was the result of a spontaneous response to the beauty when they viewed earth rising over the moon’s horizon.

The astronauts’ reflections on their emotional responses to the blue planet image, on their hopes for the impact this image might have on the people who inhabit that blue planet, their dreams of a time when we might come together as earth inhabitants regardless of the boundaries we have placed between countries and peoples, landed hard on my heart as I thought of the current reality of our ecological and political environments. I listened to these three men and wondered what they might say now to the current President of the United States. How they might applaud Greta Thunberg’s clear speaking about the climate change we are now living in. What they might say to the leadership of the political parties electioneering in our own country, Canada, about the need to come together united in the common imperative that the survival of life as we know it on this blue planet is no longer a certainty.

With all this I simply find myself wanting to share this remarkable documentary widely and encourage others to take the thirty minutes needed to watch it and perhaps share in my experience of deepening love for our blue planet and my desire to reach out across all our artificial boundaries sharing that love in action to preserve her for the seven generations yet to come.

another turn around the sun

Every year my birthday rolls around in mid May, another year another labyrinth, drawn and walked on a beach somewhere. This practice has been central to my birthday celebration since the mid 1990’s. I started the practice when I lived in Kitsilano on the West Side of Vancouver marking and walking my labyrinths at Spanish Banks in the days before Burrard Inlet was choked with freighters. In those days there were pleasant sandy flats at low tide, ideal for labyrinth drawing and walking, and I was a regular ocean swimmer there. Things have changed as I noticed in early May this year. I had to be careful not to get sucked into the mud on my way to what I hoped was a sand bar, only to find a mud slurry almost as soft and sinky as the one I had just squelched through. Not to be deterred I drew a pre-birthday labyrinth, because I was there and because it felt important to honour the memory of so many of my earlier labyrinths.

When I left Vancouver and moved to the K’ómoks Valley I drew and walked my birthday labyrinths on the wide expanse of sandy beach and open sandbars at Kye Bay.

Kye Bay Beach, Comox, BC

Now living in Victoria for my last two birthdays, Willows Beach has held me for the drawing and walking of my birthday labyrinth.

Willows Beach, Oak Bay, BC May 2018

This year it was late in the afternoon before the tide was out sufficiently to offer me a strip of moderately dry but firm sand for this annual ritual. Part of the ritual is to find a stick on the beach, and there is always the perfect stick within easy distance. Drawing carefully beginning with the + mark, I added a chevron at each corner, and a dot allowing enough space for a moderate pathway to accommodate a comfortable walking width. Beginning at the top of the + I marked a wide circle ending at the vertical of the first chevron to the right thus setting my entrance point on the right. Connecting chevron to dot, dot to chevron and horizontal + to horizontal + eventually an eight circuit classic labyrinth design is achieved.

Taking time to breathe in the fresh ocean air, the lovely expanse of water dotted with islands, noticing the quiet broken by a small motor boat moving slowly across the horizon, the murmur of gulls, my body awareness sank down into the soft sandy ground giving me a sense of rootedness in this place. As often happens there were a couple of casual observers, one who walked by twice declining my invitation to join me, the other who walked by then sat at a distance on a log watching the scene and perhaps me although by then I was ready to enter the otherworldly space of my labyrinth walk.

My practice is simple. Walk in with intention to drop away the day’s/week’s/year’s excess of thought, planning, busy mindedness, arriving at the centre with space to allow a resting and observing. Here my intention shifts to open curiosity as to what the labyrinth might bring this time. I may or may not have gathered pebbles, shells, wood, feathers, or other beach treasures on my walk in which I then place at the centre. I may or may not turn to the four directions, the sky above and the earth below. I may or may not raise my arms wide to embrace the space around me. I may or may not receive a distinct clear call while in the centre. The decision to begin my walk out of the labyrinth arises from within me, my gaze is drawn back to the line on the sand and my feet begin to retrace their path. Sometimes clarity of thought comes during the walk out, sometimes it arrives as I step off the path and turn again to face the centre. This year the message came during the walk out through the soles of my feet in contact with the ground inviting a celebration of the beginning that each turn of my birth year offers. A beginning to a year of my choosing. A beginning that carries refreshed intention and commitment to myself. A sacred trust to live fully and gratefully into the days ahead of me.

reflections on a residency

On Sunday I had the privilege of participating in a post-residency talk with Barbara Bickel and R. Michael Fisher of Studio M* exploring what we have learned and are continuing to learn from the work of my winter residency with them (see blog posts January 3 and 13).  A recording of this conversation becomes #13 in a series of Parallel Recordings co-created by Barbara and Michael and found on the Studio M* website.

Since returning from my Mexico trip in March, I have been very focused on researching and thinking about what we are currently referring to in Canada as ‘reconciliation’. It is clear to me that my role as a settler, immigrant, white, privileged Canadian is to find my own way to contribute to this process. I have chosen to do this through art and a continuation of the work I began in Calgary. I am engaged in a collaborative arts-based research project with the intention of healing my own relationship to the history of this country in which I have chosen to spend most of my life.

I am a follower of Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings a buffet of elegantly written email messages that brings writers and books current and past into my inbox. I don’t always read the emails, and was so glad I did last week as I discovered an issue full of gifts in wise words from Rebecca Solnit and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Solnit captures the essence of my intention for this project when she says: “key to the work of changing the world is changing the story”. This expresses the core of my desire to contribute to changing the colonizer story of how Canada was settled, by changing my own internal story. I believe that by decolonizing my own attitudes, opinions and beliefs, through art in the broadest sense of the word, I can change how I respond to the opportunities offered by ‘reconciliation’, and possibly become a resource or inspiration for other settlers to do the same.

“Finding the words is another step in learning to see,” bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote in reflecting on what her Native American tradition and her training as a scientist taught her about how naming confers dignity upon life. ‘If to name is to see and reveal — to remove the veil of blindness, willful or manipulated, and expose things as they really are — then it is in turn another step in remaking the world, another form of resistance to the damaging dominant narratives that go unquestioned’. …. ‘once you know what you’re facing, you’re far better equipped to know what you can do about it.’

My current thinking has been influenced by Paulette Regan’s book ‘Unsettling the Settler Within’ from which I am gleaning much needed information and perspective helping me to see some new truths and use new language in naming the nature of indigenous/non-indigenous history in Canada. Regan brings forward a compelling argument about the ways in which the historical narrative of the dominant culture has created and continues to support the myth of what she refers to as the ‘benevolent peacemaker’. This greater depth of information and understanding is important I believe, if we are to move beyond the somewhat legalistic approach to ‘reconciliation’ which currently seems to characterize Canadian thinking. I have also found it very instructive in identifying ways in which those of us committed to our own reconciling work can find our own way to action and not simply rely on government agencies and institutions to do the work of ‘reconciliation’.

Regan suggests that the ‘benevolent peacemaker’ myth arose from the  comparison between Canada’s approach to treaty making and the US history of Indian wars. This somewhat dubious but convenient line of thought is used to shore up the untruths that prevail concerning what happened during colonization in Canada. These untruths can still be found in Canadian history books, and programs such as the award winning CBC documentary series “Canada: A People’s History” aired in 2000 and 2001, and the 2017 mini-series “Canada: The Story of Us” made for Canada 150 which CBC claimed “celebrates how we transformed differences into understanding and created a unique national identity”. To give them credit the CBC did apologize for this huge cultural mis-step after an enormous public outcry, however it does point to the need for a much deeper education on what a decolonizing process needs to look like.

Regan’s text takes me on a ride of optimism and despair. She quotes Brian Titley an historian’s comments that in the context of settlement and treaties it is settler attitudes of arrogance, contempt, denial, fear and guilt which were and are the hallmark of Canadian government policies and programs inflicted on indigenous peoples.  The denial of racism is a major impediment to meaningful ‘reconciliation’ in Canada, yet we all know the story of Colten Boushie. We need more than apologies and financial settlements to move us into a new narrative. As I edit this post on the morning of May 23 I hear that our Prime Minister is in Saskatchewan today to ‘exonerate’ Chief Poundmaker of the Cree nation of the treason for which he was imprisoned 130 years ago. There is such irony in this occurring in the very province where a young Cree man was shot and killed by a settler farmer simply for being on the farmer’s land.  The award winning documentary
about this Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up is currently touring Canada.

One encouraging note from a national benchmark survey is the finding that 67% of Canadians believe that individuals have a role to play in bringing about full reconciliation. The question then is how can we as individuals participate meaningfully in the process?

I am beginning by researching and at this stage my art is in my writing. I am encouraged by the words of Toni Morrison who in a 2013 speech at Vanderbilt University said “I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here. And if we serve, we last. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to care deeply and to be human completely. I believe.”

In Unsettling the Settler Within, Chapter 2 Rethinking Reconciliation I was caught by a quote: ‘….as currently envisioned, reconciliation is actually a huge obstacle to justice and real peacemaking…the blame for this lies with………. those settlers whose ignorance and wilful denial of our historical reality detract from any possibility of meaningful discussion on true reconciliation’

those settlers
whose wilful denial
of historical reality
detract from
any possibility
of meaningful exchange
on the truth
about the progress
of reconciliation

there is rhythm
in these words
like the drum beat
in the circle
sets the heartbeat
for the song

there is learning
for this settler
in the research
deeply studied
articulated
eloquently framed

reading, learning,
teaching, listening
these days the
journey moves me inside
my own internal landscapes
need to be explored

the years I’ve spent in Canada
as immigrant 
and mother,
as wife 
and friend,
student
 and teacher,
as leader and as follower
curious and questioning
listening, wondering,
seeking and asking
for a truth I understand

I call myself a witch
follow celtic pagan teachings
feel resonance in ways they ask me
to relate to mother earth
finding in the teachings
of indigenous relations
ancient wisdom and medicine
familiar yet new

artist, woman identified as queer
gender bending far beyond
traditions of my youth
constraints and limitations
set by culture of my ancestors
cast to the winds
no longer relevant to the life I seek to live

new foundations now define me
supporting change in many ways
aging has become a friend
a time when crowded memories
from length of life richly led
with love and hope
now hold me strong
with kinder gentler gaze

settler colonizer
are labels I attend to
harsh words yet strong
push me leaning fiercely
into truths denied
a laser beam illuminating change

within me lives the product
of my heritage
the English girl
shaped and trained in
Euro-centric thought
my culture is the culture
of the colonizer
the treaty maker

more truthfully named
the treaty breaker
imposing systems
foreign and unknown
to eliminate indigenous
rights and culture
steal lands and resources
all in the name of
benevolent peacemaker

to re-name, re-vision
re-write the story
this now is my work
my quest and my commitment
to find the place within
from which I can arise
emergent, open willing to engage
in meaningful reciprocal
healing and change

noticing my thoughts
watching my responses
observing their nature
questioning the underlying
values and beliefs
from which they form

sensing shifts in
long held core foundations
of influence, attitude,
opinions and beliefs,
I catch a glimpse of
something new in me

someone who can watch herself
and catch herself in time to seed
her own response
in newly fertile ground

I have no definition for
true reconciliation
the dictionary presents
two different views
is this the
‘restoration of friendly relations’
or is it the
‘action of making one view or belief 
compatible with another’

the former sounds less complex
the latter more a challenge
do we have the will, desire and skill
to honestly, determinedly
reach out to one another
on the warp of new relations
in the twenty-first century
and weave the weft of Canada
with threads of heartfelt truths

During the conversation last Sunday with Barbara and Michael, I was challenged with the question of how the research I am doing both anthropological and arts-based, can make a difference in the dominant culture. I have a deep faith that learning to reclaim our relationship to the earth is a way to shift the beliefs behind actions on the economy, social/cultural/environmental policies, climate change, and indigenous/settler relationships. The process of art opens us to the healing available in that relationship and in the ancestral medicine and teachings of indigenous peoples. Through my collaboration with an indigenous friend/artist/elder in training, I am learning from the teachings of the elders, and the teachings of the land. Honouring and re-membering the original peoples through my art in the present, this is the medicine for my healing. My work is driven by the desire to find the truth for myself in the complex and enduring cultural rift that exists between indigenous and non-indigenous populations in this country. As Dame Iris Murdoch observed “A motive for change in art has always been the artist’s own sense of truth.”

Barbara proffered that the artist is a distiller and as such I have been weaving ancestral threads  in my art practice since the first piece I created as a co-researcher on her PhD dissertation team in 2007. That piece is a map of the UK mounted on board, with woven rope, rocks and shells from the beach at my mother’s home on the South coast of England, and a frieze of wording around the edge ‘we are ancestral threads in the eternal weaving of our ancestors’. She pointed out the connectivity between the art of my current research focus evolving from the residency, with the art produced in a residency in 2010 at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto Islands. In 2010 I was distraught at the oil spill created by the Deepwater Horizon accident and used found plastic objects from the beach to create Oil Catcher. In 2019 I used found feathers and a found embroidery hoop to create a piece evoking the connections between people and the land in Great Horned Owl. The themes of the circle, the web, red thread, symbols of culture and nature all appear in both pieces.

Oil Catcher 2010

Great Horned Owl 2019

Barbara’s long time influence as my art mentor and collaborator, is now enriched by Michael’s input as artist/co-creator/teacher/guide. We three are now co-presencing, co-becoming with each other within the holding place that is Studio M*. Weaving our individual and collaborative threads into a web of restorative and creative exchange for healing and transformation.

In response to Michael’s invitation for any final observations on the call, I said: “I’m very aware of my privilege to be here, now, healthy, able, well-resourced and supported, with time to actually dedicate to doing this work. I recognize that this is not a process that is going to fit for others, I’m not suggesting that, what I’m hoping will come from this process is some thing(s) or happenings that will be a resource for others to pull them into their own process of curiosity, bringing healing around this big rift in our country, that really needs to be healed if we are to look optimistically at change on many levels in the future.”

An unsettling time

Spending time in Vancouver I find myself drawn to nourishing pursuits that serve to bring me in closer touch with myself and to seek out opportunities to spend time with nature and art.

I have been staying in the West End enjoying the Stanley Park lagoon a truly beautiful place of sanctuary and peace amidst the hum of traffic on the causeway.

The days have been quite cool and overcast bringing a grey cast to the atmosphere, until this morning when clear blue skies and sun greeted me on my morning walk.

Today my feet led me away from the lagoon towards the seawall walk around the marina, where my thoughts led me to memories of this place in the ’60’s and ’80’s. In 1968 I was working as an office manager in Toronto for a Chicago based hearing aid manufacturer, Ultra Sonic Hearing Aids. The company owner – I don’t recall his name – took me along on a business trip to Vancouver and we stayed at the Bayshore Inn. This morning my eyes searched the buildings around the marina seeking the outline of the original Bayshore, before the tower, before it became the Westin Bayshore, before the Georgia Street development, before, before, before!! I could not be sure of it from my seawall vantage point, nor could I recreate in my mind the image I remembered of the marina in the ’80’s when my good friends Jim and Jane had their first power boat moored there a few steps away from the Bayshore.

The view this morning was of hundreds of craft moored inside hundreds of identical blue boatsheds, or on open docks. The pathway I was walking on is now divided offering space for walkers/runners and a separate path for cyclists and other wheeled personally powered conveyances. I saw no birds other than gulls on the marina, the water tidal though it is was skunky and a bit smelly, mud, rock the occasional shell, certainly not an abundance of life in those waters. This city skyline is indeed beautiful, an example of urban development that rivals many large cities of the world. The location beside the ocean and the mountains is spectacular. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to see this place before Vancouver became the ‘world class’ city it is today.

I walked to the totem poles where I found the sculpture carved by Stz’uminus master carver, Ts’uts’umult Luke Marston. The piece depicts Portuguese Joe Silvey from the Azores around 1860 and his two wives the first pqaltan:at of Musqueam and Squamish descent, the second Luke’s great-great-grandmother Kwatleematt a Shishå1h (Sechelt) nation matriarch. The family lived at what is now known as Brockton point, called Spapayaq in Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh, and P’ápeyek’ in Squamish languages.

From that point on everything I saw, felt and experienced on my walk was through a different lens. I felt the presence of the first people’s on this land. I saw the trees as aged beings, witness to hundreds of years of change. I imagined the natural contours of the ground, the earth, the rocks, the low growth, the beaches the ocean with no pavement or rock wall or sea defences. I saw the North shore with no industry, no piles of sulphur or lime, instead thickly forested with the mixed forests native to this region and imagined the abundant wildlife supported by this environment before settler arrival and colonizer policies and institutions overwhelmed the land and culture of the people.

I’m reading Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Reagan, who was the Director of Research for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This book was published in 2010 two years after the Canadian government apologized to the victims of the Indian Residential School system and established the TRC. While the TRC’s work brought forward much needed stories from residential school survivors, and the final report delivered a series of recommendations for action by governments, this book offers people like me, an immigrant from England in 1966, a settler colonizer in every sense of the word, an opportunity to decolonize my embedded attitudes and beliefs, with the hope that I can learn from and change my own relationship to first nations and become a worthy participant in the process of reconciliation.

 

Playing in San Miguel

Rediscovering my love of metal sculpture

Undoubtedly the creative highlight of my trip were the two days spent at Van Doren Metal Art studio in the Los Frailes district a newer development on the outskirts of the historic town.

view of Los Frailes from the studio deck

The house is open, with spacious rooms, high ceilings and full of Lane’s art collection and his own work. We were treated to lunch in the dining room both days, and of course the dog came along.

Alex and his father Lane have a big studio full of old style, accessible and easy to work with metal tools. The two of them facilitate with great ease, enthusiasm and joy supporting small groups to create metal art of all kinds. In addition to the tools, the studio has a great collection of metal bits and pieces gleaned from frequent scrapyard visits on Alex’s part, and regular donations from his circle of contacts in the metal scrap business.

 

Day one we ‘met’ the tools, everyone had a chance to use every tool, all the while the group of us were scheming and imagining what we might make. By the end of the day concepts were being drawn up, bits and pieces gathered and arranged, larger pieces of metal being cut, the creative juices really flowing. I knew early on that I would make a mask, don’t know why, I’ve never made one before, the idea of a two part representation, perhaps the classic theatre mask, perhaps some other approach. I mulled it over that evening and in the morning it was clear, one side would be pre-columbian, the other European. I was set and ready to roll.

Cutting, welding, shaping, turning, finding small pieces, gradually the sections began to form themselves into something. Lots of helpful input from Lane and Alex, a hand here and there where my welding skills failed, experimenting with each step, just the way I love to work.

the base steel form cut with the plasma cutter, then cut in half and welded at an angle gave me my starting point. bits and pieces gathered from the collection made eyes.

acid washed steel strips turned around the cutter handle, became pre columbian hair.

then the mouth, two folded steel circles, some welding art and a piece of copper for the tongue, had to have that copper!!

with lots of help from Lane, masking the mask to add the final touch, paint in two shades for added emphasis.

We five all left delighted with our new work to carry home – an essential element in my decision to make something I could fit into my suitcase!!

 

Hot Springs on a hot day

I was doubtful but game to give it a go when my new friend from the Writers’ Conference suggested a trip to the hot springs. Now I love hot springs, don’t get me wrong, but I just wasn’t sure that a hot spring on a 25 degree celsuis day would feel good. We headed out of town to La Gruta spa about twenty minutes on the wide smooth highway, pulled into the gravel parking lot and found our way to the entrance. I was so pleasantly surprised, I guess my expectations were not high, and this place exceeded them. The pool was lovely, soaking with friendly families and delightful curious Mexican children. It was a delight watching the easeful play of these good natured people. We ventured into the tunnel arriving in a white domed grotto where a blast of hot water spews from high on the rock wall offering a powerful back and shoulder massage.

We finished the afternoon relaxing with a marguerita after our dip, with our shade umbrella and table on an open grassy patio.

marguerita time at the hot springs with Doug Rice

 

Art Party at the Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery

I was assured by Doug that the Chapel of Jimmy Ray was not to be missed and he was right. The gallery is an amazing creation of mosaic artist Anando McLaughlin and his partner who have developed a piece of countryside into a fantasyland of delight. Whimsical works employing hundreds of wine bottles, tons of broken mirrors and pottery, sparkling costume jewellery and other notions adorn the gallery, the house, and the lands around them. The most unique composting toilet stands proud near the gallery, a testament to the brilliance of eco-friendly, practical sculptural art. I was among a goodly crowd in attendance at an art party and opening to celebrate the work of Shirli Marcantel and Greg Ellis wonderful collage artists whose work somehow complimented Anando’s mosaics.

welcoming entry

come into the gallerythe composting toilet

the exhibit

Anando’s mosaics

the house

back yard wall in process

the entertainment so typical of Mexico, giant puppets.

 

Finding my San Miguel

Danza del Alma morning moving
Sunday San Miguel far from home
where Dance Temple has just begun
every move every position
I feel restrictions in musculature
inviting body to move easefully
within her limits
slow
smooth
moves
stretch
gentle
aware now how this body
asks for kind attention
other bodies move past fast
slow down around me
swirling arms feet legs
leaping body weaves
in out around
breath deep into feet
feet breathe deep into ground
sounds around
soft skin slap
floor tap clap
bright spark morning sunlight
through open door
faces peering
curious
watching our dancing
music moving
voices stilled

That first Sunday friends introduced me to San Miguel’s La Danza at what would become my favorite place in the city, Bellas Artes. After dance we shared a light breakfast of quiche and espresso drinks in the calming quiet of the old cloister looking out on the fountain courtyard and wrote together sharing words and thoughts in gentle camaraderie. I returned often to this courtyard café to write in its peaceful atmosphere while the fountain played and the churchbells rang out the quarters and hours of the day.

Close to my home in the Guadalupe neighbourhood I found another favourite haunt, Geek and Coffee behind Fabrica la Aurora a converted textile factory now housing artist studios and galleries.

The spaces at Fabrica La Aurora were a treasure trove of artists’ expression a place where I was able to wander with ease through studios and galleries. Greeted by a great grizzly bear I felt at home.

I was intrigued and delighted by the juxtaposition of the old factory machinery with the contemporary art.

San Miguel has a mural tradition started at the original Instituto de Allende (now Bellas Artes) where students received instruction in mural painting. A few of the original student murals remain on the walls of the cloisters enclosing the courtyard.

In 1950 the Instituto moved to its current location the restored palatial ‘country’ home of the Canal family. In the courtyard here a striking mural of the history of San Miguel, painted by contemporary muralist David Leonardo dominates the space.

 

Colonia Guadalupe is the mural district of San Miguel. Murals decorate the walls of houses, restaurants, empty buildings along many of the streets in the neighbourhood.

Local eateries, Mio Bistrock fondly referred to as the food truck, and Via Organika nourished me many an evening.

Mara introduced me to the food truck only open on Thursdays through Sundays. It is operated by a Mexico City family who served up the very best food I had in San Miguel. All cooked in the tiny truck kitchen, either by the Dad or Mum of the family and served to the customer by the two sons in a rustic courtyard backed by a stunning mural, always accompanied by a great marguerita.