A Collaborative Walk In The Woods

                                                         
                                                        A forest in the making...

A studio full of eager participants... and paints, and brushes, and cutout shapes...

A walk in the woods!

Building Bridges

Saturday afternoon. 

A typical Canadian January in Peterborough Ontario.

Half a dozen kids are sprawled on the floor of the art studio, delicately handling a variety of somewhat unusual building materials - toothpicks, raisins, straws, connectors, newspaper wands, masking tape...

We are building bridges.

Well, not totally true. 

We're getting to that, but right now, because the unusual materials require some experimentation, the results are more like squares and triangles, cubes and tetrahedra and geodesic beginnings.

But we will GET to bridges...

In front of the large studio window, (with the wintry scene beyond the glass framing her), sits my new friend.

She is the mother of one of the kids. She sits patiently, smiling at the goings-on, occasionally speaking softly to her child in Arabic.

We had met before at a previous art group, got to chatting about her new life in Peterborough - home, family, getting around town, buses, schools.

The weather.

When she shows up to this session, we smile at each other in mutual recognition.

Her child, chatty and cheerful. 

But there is an edgy nervousness that may explain some of their difficult past - the many moves, the destruction of their beautiful homeland, a child's over-eagerness for acceptance.

She sits quietly, smiling warmly whenever our eyes meet. 

When she glances at the clock and stands, I make my way over to her. 

It is mid-afternoon, and she asks if she may use the empty room next door, for just a moment.

To pray.

She is a gentle woman. 

I am struck by the grace she carries with her.

In spite of horrors in her near-past, she is trusting, kind, loving. 

She tells me that Peterborough is such a peaceful place. 

Peterborough.

With the river running through it, it is a city of bridges.

Linking one side to the other, west to east.

Such a peaceful place.

(God, please let it stay that way.)

'Trinity Lake' Large Works

'Credo Lake Passage'  2016   30" x 60"

'Afloat'     2016      3 panels each 24" x 24"

'Toward Trinity Lake'    2016     72" x 96"

Delahay's Line

I am never likely to claim as a certainty, my uncertain but certainly not-impossible Maori ancestry.

                                           

Young Delahay in Auckland NZ

My great-grandmother Delahay Woods Renouf was born in Auckland, New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century.

There she met my great-grandfather John Renouf, who had sailed to Auckland from England aboard the 'Zealandia', a full-rigged clipper ship built in 1869, a trip which took more than three months.

Delahay and John fell in love, and left Auckland for John's home - St. Helier, Jersey, (Jersey being one of the tiny Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy), half a world, (and more than three months), away.

For the next fifteen years they lived there, having ten children, the sixth being my grandfather, Ralph Renouf.
Seven weeks after their tenth child, Kathleen, was born, Delahay died of rheumatic fever.
She was thirty-five.

It is family lore that Delahay was part Maori.
Well, maybe.
Some say that her mother was Maori, though even if there is some truth in that, Delahay's mother may have been half or one-quarter or one-eighth or one-sixteenth Maori.
Maybe.
Or Maori of such distance, that these New Zealand indigenous roots may be as fine as windblown dust.

Delahay in Jersey, Channel Islands

Maybe.                                                      

It is somewhat tenuous, this Maori heritage of mine.
Is it true?

The Renouf Family - John, Delahay, Fred, Nora, Lucy, Mark, Arthur, Ralph, Dennis, Keith, Doris

(before the birth of Kathleen) 

I don't know.
 But I have, at least, travelled to the place of her birth.
In January of 1960, (at the age of four), I sailed, (along with the rest of my family), aboard the SS Arcadia, a two week-long voyage from Vancouver to Auckland.
Here we lived for sixteen months.
Like my great-grandmother, I began my education, dipped my toes in the seas that washed the pebbled beaches of Ladies Bay and the black sands of Piha, ran barefoot, stared out at Rangitoto, ate guavas, breathed air scented with tropical flowers, observed the same muted landscape.


What I do know is that I feel a deep connection to Delahay.

As a visual artist I see her, to a certain extent, as my muse. 
The concepts of roots, and journey, and sense of place, are what my art is about.



And I feel a certain sense of duty to her. 
My great-grandmother lived only to be thirty-five. 
At that age, I was just (slowly) getting it together, as far as my art is concerned. 
And my art is, at least in part, my legacy. 
As one of her offspring, shouldn't I be compelled, in one way or another, to tell her story too?
Isn't her story a part of me?



So I reserve the right to explore my 'maybe'. 
It may be fiction, and it may be a fine threadlike wisp of a root, but I refuse to discount the possibility that my ancestor, Paikea, may have travelled to New Zealand on the back of a whale, just as I travel my Ontario canoe routes, (via a 1962 Chestnut canoe), through abstract landscapes and tree images.



I reserve the right.
And I do it for Delahay.

Aioli and Other Delights

Aioli

(eh-oh-lee)

                                                     


Mash 1 clove of garlic with 1/4 tsp salt

Add:
6 tbls (real) mayo
2 tbls plain yogurt
squeeze of lemon juice
drizzle of olive oil
s + p

Whisk well.

Make a couple of hours before serving.
Store Aioli for several days in a covered container in the fridge.
Serve with grilled veggies or meats, rice, salads, raw veggies, olives... or a combo all wrapped up in a tortilla.

                                             Homemade Hummus



Into a large mixing bowl, throw the following:

1  clove garlic, finely minced
1  tbls tahini
2  tbls plain yogurt
3  tbls olive oil
1  540 ml can chick peas, drained
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp cumin
s + p

Pulse with hand mixer and stir for several minutes to blend into a porridge-like consistency.
Taste and adjust seasonings, (if necessary).
Store in a covered container.
Keeps in the fridge for days.

                                         

So, this is what we are eating in the sweltering and very dry Ontario Summer.

Any grilling, done on the barbie. Lots of zucchini and eggplant, (cut in long steaks, and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, s+p), but also shish-kababs - onion, mushroom, peppers, chick or beef...
Salads, (mostly using our own garden produce), involving tomatoes, cucumber, swiss chard, peppers, herbs of all sorts, with a generous sprinkle of feta or blue cheese.

This summer's fave rice dish is the easy-peasy Zatarain's Jambalaya Mix, (to which we add 1/2 cup of uncooked basmati rice at time of cooking, to expand volume and cut down on the saltiness).

Aioli, excellent with all of the above...

 Enjoy!

ps - Oh, and, (apart from beer and wine),
Slimonata - (half soda water, half Limonata... and lots of ice!)

Drawing the Circle Wide

Draw the circle wide.

Draw it wider still.

Let this be our song. No one stands alone, standing side by side.

  Draw the circle wide.* 

It's easy to become frustrated, (yet again), by those who just can't seem to learn to 

SING THIS SONG. 

Why is that?

As children, we all learn the most important lesson in the world - 

BE KIND.

Be compassionate and generous and tolerant and understanding and fair. Be a helper, celebrate diversity.

 LOVE.

And be reminded again and again and again and again that

 LOVE IS BETTER THAN ANGER, HOPE IS BETTER THAN FEAR.** 

Be silent no more,

 because we need to start a conversation.

We are all needed to start a conversation with family, friends, co-workers, about what sort of world we want to live in.

We are all needed to start a conversation about safe places in our communities - safe for all who feel threatened because of their sexual orientation or gender identity -  in our schools, public places, 

and yes,

 our churches, temples, synagogues, mosques. 

We are all needed to help create an environment free of homophobia, heterosexism, or other forms of exclusion, to help create an environment where we are as accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals, or anyone marginalized in society, as we are of heterosexual people.

And if safe places are not apparent in our communities, what are we doing to create them? 

Are conversations happening where you live, where you work, at your kid's school, in your place of worship? 

If not, why not? 

 What if all of our religious places, our schools, our restaurants and bars and theatres, our grocery stores and gyms, our parks and playgrounds, worked together to make our communities beacons of inclusivity for all to see?

Draw the circle wide.

Draw it wider still.

Let this be our song. No one stands alone, standing side by side.

Draw the circle wide.

*Mark Miller and Gordon Light

** Jack Layton

Trinity Lake

I have lost track of the number of times I’ve read Annie Dillard’s poignant and spiritual collection of writings, ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’.

I, too, am ‘a frayed and nibbled survivor’. My art is a necessity, at times painfully so, lodging an idea in my head, then poking and prodding me until I get it down.

And so goes my voyage.

My first memory of being in a canoe was the summer I turned seven. Our family’s 16-foot Chestnut canoe, the scent of wood and canvas, sun on water, and holding my very own paddle, stirred within me the concept of journey, voyage, passage.

Of pilgrimage.

 I suppose, spiritually, I see myself as a canoe, still afloat, (in spite of a few scrapes), but moving through water, bumping the shoreline here and there, occasionally needing to be portaged, always searching the far shore for a landing place.

This body of work, (mixed-media on canvas and wood), explores the well-travelled canoe routes of Trinity Lake. These routes are my roots, they are with me always, and though not found on any map, still somehow a part of me and of my journey taken.

Anne Renouf

Indian River Ontario

Spring, 2016