studio

Stories about my father and his ranch, which I started a year ago, have been scribbled down, typed up, workshopped, ordered, illustrated and made whole. Now my beta readers weigh in with their suggestions, knocking me off my high horse and back to earth. The last time I was knocked off a high horse was […]

Yesterday’s pink dawn was absorbed by the peachy trees and then pink and peach were both subsumed by my fibbing phone camera and its robotic desire to please by saturating colour and smoothing out the smallest imperfections. Capturing what you perceive is easier with a digital camera, and easier still with a film camera (but

… is in part the inability to let things be. It was time to make this piece from 2020, called Stanchion, “exhibitable”. My bricolage settings for poems tend to defy convention and complicate my intention to submit pieces to juried art shows, which can have particular rules. And now I have a poetry reading coming

This is what remains of Sgang Gwaay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Gwaii Haanas National Park, Haida Gwaii. (In 2010 the Haida Nation “respectfully repatriated” the name “Queen Charlotte Islands” back to the Crown.) Trying to write there, I found myself silenced by the power of the constantly moving water and the still shoulders

Dew on the strawberry leaf evokes the Elizabethan lace ruff, hung with pearls, an artifice undoubtedly inspired by an intimate view of nature such as this. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by humans; space, the air, the river, the leaf.  Art is applied to the mixture of

Are you spending too much time writing? Need a distraction? No, I thought not. Nonetheless, Colour Theory is teaching me that our shadow selves are not pitch dark, but are shades of nameless violet, wine and earth. There are, of course, those who are paid money by house paint manufacturers to give names to the

Let’s go with the optimism of calling a cold yet sunny day “spring”. I spent the morning spring cleaning my written works, making a spot for the many iterations of completed poems, consolidating piles of works in progress, gleaning rough notes for gems, starting some new pieces. Now to exercise the other side of my

So said Dick Proenneke in his film series, Alone in the Wilderness (PBS). He filmed himself building a log cabin in the wilds of Alaska, from felling the trees to making his bed. In between he would roam with his cameras and film the wildlife. On rainy days he would cut and roll empty tin

As I’ve been writing about my father’s ranch, I also worked on a project for Tristan, whose grandparents’ had a ranch near Edmonton. This is a hide from one of the last of their herd that Tristan wanted put to some use. Working with leather appeals to the senses; it is has scent, it is

Did you know that Leonard Cohen only got 77 in Grade 9 Literature? Did you want to know that? Did L. Cohen want us to know that? Vicky and I went on an Artist’s Date to the Art Gallery of Ontario, where we took in the Leonard Cohen exhibit. How do you mount an exhibit