Categories
Artwork General

Exhibit Background for “Maps of Loss: Rivers, Ruins, and Grief” (Richview Library, September 2011)

I rediscovered my love of art when I was 38 years old. The spark was a class facilitated by Erica Ross called “Create Your Own Healing Deck” at Sheena’s Place in 2007. By the end of the course, I had created more than a dozen cards that contained encouraging words and images to address my struggles with emotional eating.

My collages were exhibited at Sheena’s Annual Art Show (2007 and 2008), and I continued to attend classes there, including Erica’s “Dance Our Way Home” and Ellen Jaffe’s “Writing Your Way.” The prose-poem that accompanies Ruined Barn in this exhibit emerged from a writing exercise in which Ellen asked us to imagine ourselves as a landscape. Barn Memory wrote itself in a white-water rush, a lament for past and current losses:

I am a ruined barn, empty but smelling of ancient hay. I sit in a lost valley, no longer a shelter nor part of a living farm. I used to be warmer, to glow orange from lanterns on February mornings, to retain animal heat. Now my shadows fill in their outlines, random headlight baths from the highway my only relief.

All my sounds are whispers and echoes now, where once I heard grunts, shouts, whinnies, cries of pain and hunger. It’s so quiet now. Ruin is quiet . . . . I miss being whole. I miss being real. I miss the animals I used to protect.

Ruined Barn, Catherine Raine 2010. (Exhibit photos by Stewart Russell).

Barn Memory and the collage that illustrates it are the “grief-seeds” (Rumi) at the root of Maps of Loss: Rivers, Ruins, and Grief. Even though I made the encaustic painting Inner Map: Non-Political three years after I wrote the barn piece, there is a living connection between these two inner landscapes and the eight other works of art you see at Richview Library today.

Inner Map (Non-Political), Catherine Raine 2010

Maps of Loss has helped me articulate grief and map it visually, divining underground rivers of emotion that I had not detected beneath the surface. This personal excavation has revealed unexpected artifacts, including a Trippy Pier to Nowhere, a Heron and Ladder, a woman alone in a purple bed, and rivers (Tidal River and Encaustic River Beast). These unearthed souvenirs of my psyche speak to mystery, solitude, and a sense of moorings washed away.

Trippy Pier to Nowhere, Catherine Raine 2009
Heron and Ladder, Catherine Raine 2009
Woman in Purple Bed, Catherine Raine 2009

In July 2010, my childhood friend Jenny died of cancer at age 41. On the day she died, I went to the Picture Collection at the Toronto Reference Library to look for meadows and the flowers she loved. I felt connected to Jenny when I pored over a folder containing peaceful scenes from nature. And when I memorialized my friend in Jenny’s Purple Iris, I used her favorite flower to create an organic gown, a vision of peace in her body after the suffering ended.

Jenny’s Purple Iris, Catherine Raine 2010

In the fall of 2010, I distracted myself with a continuing education course in encaustic painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design. I learned how to melt wax to create tactile pieces that smelled of beeswax, and the three encaustic paintings in Maps of Loss come from my time at OCAD. Two of these pieces contain rivers, which reflects one of my earliest influences. Having grown up near the banks of the Missouri River, rivers mean home, time passing, movement, and change. They also represent uncensored feelings: unpredictable, fierce, embodying invisible currents and the wild mystery of eddies.

Tidal River, Catherine Raine 2010
Encaustic River Beast, Catherine Raine 2010

The remaining two pieces, Lenin;s Mosaic and When Ruins Swoon, flow back to the beginning, connecting me to Ruined Barn. The central photographs in both collages depict ruined houses in the former Soviet Union that have partially returned to nature after nuclear disaster.

These images of Cold War wreckage haunt me because my father’s health was also ruined by this war. When he was in the United States Navy in the late 1950’s, he witnessed atomic blasts in the Pacific Ocean as part of a testing program during the nuclear arms race. From his post on Midway Island, he and his naval comrades watched the blasts without any protective gear, and the cancers he later developed correspond to cancers caused by radiation exposure. He died in 1995 at the age of 58. (Jenny promised to give him a hug for me).

Lenin’s Ruins, Catherine Raine 2011. Central image photo by Gerd Ludwig
When Ruins Swoon, Catherine Raine 2011

A ruined barn, house, or room can symbolize a body stricken by illness, once vital but now a husk. Ruins also represent loss, mortality, and history; they are relics of forgotten worlds. Like rivers, they testify to the inescapable passage of time. Like maps, they locate a particular loss in a specific time and place. They are both tangible and abstract, accessible and remote.

To add an element of hope to the ruins, I have enveloped them in mosaics that suggest new colour and growth. Thank you for taking part in my own artistic growth by viewing Maps of Loss. Your presence helps me answer Rumi’s question: “Where will you plant your grief-seeds?” (Illuminated Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks)

“Maps of Loss: Rivers, Ruins, and Grief” Exhibit at Richview Library (September 2011)
Categories
General Photography

Purple Gratitude Sheet at Dancemakers

It was my turn to DJ our six-woman dance circle last month. When I arrived at the Dancemakers studio, I put a king-size purple sheet on the floor near the windows. The sheet became our canvas for the session’s theme: Dancing in Quiet Gratitude.

In my music set, I included a number of songs that held the light: “Thread the light” (Glen Hansard’s “This Low”), “There will be a light” (Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama), “There’s still a light that shines on me” (“Let it Be”), and Brian McMillan’s encouraging lyrics in “Let the Darkness Go.”

I invited my fellow dancers to decorate the purple sheet in response to the theme of gratitude. Wielding small bottles of neon fabric paint, the four of us filled the sheet with words and images of what makes us feel thankful: rivers, voice, movement, bosoms, silliness, mistakes, great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, safe girls, spirit, breath, the forest, laughter, rocks, fierce winds, night, moon, kindness, creativity sheets, raindrops, flowers, hope, fire, goldfinches, fierce goddess, play, community, beauty, thunder, food, wild grasses, health, smiles, art, ocean, a tomato, You, a foot, refreshing tears, music, and lightning.

Over the course of the two-hour music set, the purple sheet’s function evolved. At the beginning, it operated like a picnic blanket on which to gather and discuss the theme of the session. When the music began, the sheet was a connecting fabric; all of us were lying on the floor with some part of us touching the sheet, whether it was only a head or an entire body curled up on it.

As the dance progressed, we crouched at the edges of the purple canvas each time we felt inspired to write or draw. Then we advanced to fill the centre as we moved more deeply into the set. Towards the end of our time in the studio, I started squirting fabric paint at random, and soon we were all squeezing the bottles and giggling as blobs of paint rained down on the sheet without restraint.

While we were collaborating on our modern art experiment, Brett Dennen was singing “Blessed is this life, and I’m going to celebrate being alive,” and we honored the spirit of his lyrics with our ecstatic paint-dance.

When the music ended, we formed closing circle with the painted sheet in the middle, and each of us named the images that caught our fancy (it was the tomato for me!). Then we ceremoniously folded up the sheet with the fabric paint still wet.

After I got home that night, I had to peel the sheet apart! There were plenty of smears and blobs, but most of the words and pictures remained clear. I hope you enjoy looking at the Purple Gratitude Sheet as much as we enjoyed making it!

Categories
General Toronto Public Library Pilgrimage of 100 Branches

Soul of a City Under Threat

Yesterday I signed an on-line protest against a municipal proposal that might close some library branches and introduce elements of privatization. I am passionately opposed to these cost-cutting measures, for they would impoverish our city’s ability to uplift and educate all Torontonians regardless of age, language, or income. Our ninety-nine branches are a richly diverse expression of a city’s soul, providing a nexus of human connection in an increasingly fragmented and disconnected world.

City Hall Library’s Children’s Nook

A newcomer to Canada since 2002, I have spent the last four years blogging about all 99 branches in the Toronto Public Library system. As a seasoned library pilgrim, the notion of a Toronto Private Library makes me shudder because privatization would desecrate the democratic ideals upon which the free library was established in 1883: “the free public library’s purpose was to help in the cause of education among all classes of the population” (Margaret Penman’s A Century of Service: Toronto Public Library 1883-1983, page 6).

Stairs to Upper Level, Agincourt Library

I do not want 128 years of progressive history to be demolished on a political whim. After all, libraries do not ride gravy trains. They do not travel to swanky conferences in Hawaii or linger over lunches at the top of the CN Tower. And the tabloids seldom show pictures of library branches embroiled in sex scandals.

On the contrary, libraries are where patrons study for the TOEFL test, join a knitting circle, daydream from a window seat, create a crazy quilt, fill a shopping bag full of picture books for their children, and relax with a newspaper in their first language.

Historic Main Street Library’s Attic

Barbara Frum Library

Crazy Quilt at Jones Library

If we commercialize one of the last truly public institutions in the city, where will we turn for community solace? We cannot afford to lose ground, for we have already lost so much to a culture of greed and intrusive advertising. Libraries are too special, too important to betray their founding principles without a fight. It is time to speak out against proposals that strike at the heart of our city’s soul. Sign the petition, call the mayor, and help us protect our libraries.

Port Union Library

April Quan’s Woolen Castle at Deer Park LibraryMural at Morningside Library

Categories
General TPL Talks and Programs

Library-sponsored Cultural Outing: Map Pass Rules!

Thanks to a Toronto Public Library Map Pass, I received free admission to the Textile Museum of Canada yesterday afternoon. I saved fifteen dollars and gained a rewarding experience that nourished my imagination.

Artistic Garage Door to Museum

After looking at textile treasures from the permanent collection, I enjoyed the gorgeous clothing and wall hangings on display as part of “Silk Oasis on the Silk Road: Bukhara” and the diverse elements of “Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture.”

Egyptian Door Hanging (1920-1929)

My favourite part of the library-sponsored trip was listening to the 99 attributes of God in Arabic as I sat on the floor in front of Alia Toor’s 99 dust masks embroidered with these Names. I don’t know how to read Arabic script, but I recognized a few of the words being recited into my ears via a pair of Sony headphones: Ar-Rahim (the Compassionate) and Al-Hakim (the Wise).

“99 Names of Aman” (2004) by Alia Toor

As I was leaving the soul-enriching exhibit, a family of three entered the lobby. And what did they give the cashier at admissions? A Library Map Pass, of course!

Categories
General Photography

Churchill Library on a Day of Lakes, Gourd-Banjos, and Romance Novel Heroes

Not far from the shores of Lake Simcoe, there’s a town where you can visit a small community library or make a banjo from a gourd.

Let me explain.

Last Tuesday I accompanied Stewart to Churchill (near Innisfil), where he was attending a banjo-making workshop run by Jeff Menzies. While Stewart was busy in Jeff’s studio, I spent the morning beside the lake and the afternoon at the Churchill branch of Innisfil Public Library.

One of four branches of the Innisfil Public Library system, Churchill’s small size, leafy setting, and friendly staff reminded me of the library in the small town where I grew up in the Midwest. And just as my mother used to take my brother and I on weekly library visits, several Churchill moms brought their kids to the local branch on that Tuesday afternoon. One mother-daughter pair arrived with bicycle helmets and awesome summer reading habits, for the mom talked her child into hurrying with the words: “Come on! We’ll be back tomorrow!”

I could see why Churchill patrons would want to be regulars at such a welcoming branch. The librarian had reading suggestions for the parents and stickers for the kids, all of whom she knew by name. In addition to a row of three computers with Internet access, there was a nook reserved for children who wanted to play computer games.

With limited space upstairs, the basement was devoted to children’s programs. The librarian told me it was a “work in progress,” but I liked the lower level’s simplicity. It resembled the Baptist church basements of my childhood where I ate potluck suppers on metal chairs and sang about Zacchaeus in a Sycamore Tree and Jesus having the Whole World in His Hands.

I returned to the main floor to see if there was a French or multilingual collection. Although I didn’t find any foreign language offerings, I did notice a feature that the Toronto Public Library system lacks: a Reacher.

In the Romance section, I further noticed a certain Lord Lightning. This rakish character needed no Reacher to gain access to an alluring shoulder (unlike his less sexy peers, Lord Smog Advisory or Lord Drizzle).

I wish to extend my thanks to Lord Lightning and the staff at Churchill branch for making my afternoon in their lakeside community so enjoyable!

Categories
Artwork General

Three More Collage Bookmarks to Greet June

Apparently, I haven’t quite exhausted my bookmark energy. Three more of them were waiting to manifest themselves!

Categories
General TPL Talks and Programs

Rumi Shines in Collage and at Don Mills Library (and Indeed Everywhere!)

I first learned about Rumi’s 13th century sufi poetry in 2002, not long after I had immigrated to Canada. I was listening to a CBC Radio program and became transfixed by a beautiful voice reading Rumi’s verses. Soon afterwards, I bought the book pictured above and began filling it with bookmarks to facilitate access to my favourite lines, which later inspired various collages I made between 2007 and 2008:

Be melting snow

Wash yourself of yourself

A white flower grows in the quietness

Let your tongue be that flower.

Be a full bucket

Pulled up the dark way of a well

Then lifted out into light.

Why stay in prison

When the door is so wide open?

Keep knocking,

and the joy inside

will eventually open a window and . . .

see who’s there.

When I saw the recent announcement that Don Mills branch was hosting a program about Rumi, it was another knock on the door, to which I answered, “Yes! I would love to go!”

On Wednesday evening, I drove through the rain to the library. At five minutes before seven, the downstairs auditorium contained about twenty people, a number which rose to nearly fifty by the time the program ended at 8:15.

Our speaker was Tina Petrova, a remarkable woman who survived a 6,000 foot plunge in a jeep thirteen years ago. The spiritual crisis that she suffered as a result of feeling imprisoned in a broken body led her to consider suicide. On the most desolate night of her soul, she had a dream in which Rumi’s poetry spoke to her. The dream gave her hope and a newly inspired purpose: create a gathering in Toronto to celebrate Rumi in song, dance, and the spoken word.

The Rumi celebration from Petrova’s dream came to pass, and her continued immersion in the community of Rumi scholars and enthusiasts led to the making of a documentary film called Rumi: Turning Ecstatic, which we had the privilege to see on Wednesday night. In Petrova’s words, “the film made me” and the process took seven years. Her cinematic labour of love premiered in 2006 on Vision TV and has been screened in 15 countries, translated into three languages, and honoured by the United Nations and the World Bank.

Back cover of Rumi: Whirling Dervish (Written and illustrated by Demi)

Watching Rumi: Turning Ecstatic was a profound experience, all the more so because the film’s creator had just shared her story with us. We were mostly silent as we absorbed the narrative which combined Petrova’s spiritual autobiography, Rumi’s biography, scholarly commentary, and the sheer joy of dervishes in full twirl. My favourite part of the film was when Kabir Helminski quoted these verses: “Not only the thirsty seek the water — the water seeks the thirsty.” Two gentlemen in front of me literally gasped at the impact of these words.

All too soon, an automated voice announced that the library was closing in fifteen minutes. I picked up a couple of Rumi books from the display table near the door and checked them out in a reverie. As I travelled home in the heavy rain, I continued to marvel over the relevant depth and breadth of a mystic poet who left this world seven hundred years ago.

Wonderfully Non-linear Table of Contents from The Illuminated Rumi.

One of Demi’s Illustrations (page 24 of Rumi: Whirling Dervish)

Categories
Artwork General

Mother’s Day Collage

“I Like This Face” by Catherine Raine, 2011

I started making this collage on Mother’s Day a couple of weekends ago. Mom had sent me the black and white image in the center of the butterfly a few years back, and near the top of the head she had written “I like this face!” in her distinctive handwriting. (It may be a little difficult to make out the words from this photograph).

Mom has an endearing habit of sending me articles she thinks I might enjoy or find useful for art projects. I’m very lucky to have such a thoughtful, creative, and quirky mother!

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General

Blog Milestone!

As of today, Breakfast in Scarborough has had 10,027 views. Thank you, lovely readers, for proving me wrong when I initially doubted anybody would want to read about my library quest!

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Artwork General

Collage Bookmarks Keep Coming

With lots of scraps on my collage table and extra blank strips of cardboard, I felt compelled to make more bookmarks!

 

Categories
Artwork General

More Collage Bookmarks: Blue and Red Collection

It’s the last day of the Toronto Public Library’s Keep Toronto Reading month, and here’s the final installment of bookmarks to see off April. I hope you like the color combinations!

Categories
Artwork General

Purple and Pink Collage Bookmarks

The bookmark series continues, and this time it’s all about purple and pink. I’d like to dedicate the purple ones to the memory of my artistic friend Jenny.

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Artwork General

More Collage Bookmarks in Yellow, Orange, and Red

The bookmarks keep coming, this time in warm colors. Before the mini-collages disperse to various friends and colleagues, I’d like to record their images here.

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Artwork General

Collage Bookmarks: Green Collection

Lately I’ve been enjoying a relaxation technique called Make a Lot of Bookmarks and Give Them Away! I hope you enjoy the green bookmark collection.

More bookmark images will follow this post in yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, and blue!

Categories
Artwork General

Six Collage Bookmarks

For the past few days I’ve been in the mood to make bookmarks. I’m planning to give them as gifts, so I’d like to present them here before they go on their way.

What books will they eventually inhabit, I wonder?

Categories
Artwork General

“Theater of the Bosom” Textile Art

I started “Theater of the Bosom” on the train from Montreal to Quebec City about a month ago. While I was lounging in my seat, I stitched the fingers of a fuzzy glove between the buttons of the apricot shirt. I also sewed together a couple of swatches of floral and camouflage fabric.

“Theater of the Bosom” by Catherine Raine, 2011

When I returned home to Toronto, I covered a small canvas with the fabric patchwork (plus glove-n-shirt) and added more fabric. Then I took an old sports bra and dressed the canvas with it.

“Theater of the Bosom,” Catherine Raine, 2011

I thought the bra-stuffing turned out nicely, so I may as well reveal the secret to a perfect fabric silhouette: shoulder pads, pantyhose, and bits of a shirt.

For theatrical embellishments, I draped a scrap of the camouflage material (originally a bandana that my friend Noreia bought at the dollar store) and added another glove, a ribbon, more fabric scraps, and some felt.

I used stencils and fabric paint to write on the bra. Later, I dabbed small blobs of purple encaustic wax over the dried paint.

“Theater of the Bosom” by Catherine Raine, 2011

I hope that “Theater of the Bosom” will serve as a playful reminder to respect the beauty of the female form, no matter what shape, age, or dramatic dimension!

Categories
General TPL Talks and Programs

2011’s One Book Community Read: Midnight at the Dragon Café

The literary and operatic launch event for Judy Fong Bates’ Midnight at the Dragon Café is tomorrow evening, so it seems timely to offer a reader response to this year’s One Book selection .

I finished Bate’s novel in four days and felt a little lost when there was nothing more to read about the struggles of an immigrant family in a small 1960’s Ontario town. The narrator is a child, Su-Jen Annie Chou, whose parents and half-brother toil long hours in the Dragon Café and then climb stairs cluttered with restaurant supplies to sleep in the living quarters above. As the story unfolds, Su-Jen becomes an anguished witness to the secrets and resentments that lock her mother, father, and adult brother in conflict.

Interested readers will want to check out the book for themselves, so I’ll avoid mentioning too many details. I’d just like to highlight one of the truths that Midnight at the Dragon Café seared into my heart: the emotional price of immigration.

Although I haven’t experienced the bitter hardship Su-Jen’s family endured, reading their story triggered a painful memory of September 11, 2001 and the isolation it made me feel. I had been an American immigrant in Scotland for almost three years when the planes crashed into my psyche. And when the towers fell, the borders closed, and the phone lines jammed, I was suddenly aware of how profoundly stranded I was.

Su-Jen’s mother seemed to have felt something similar every single day in Canada, not only on one terrible day: “For my mother . . . home would always be China. In Irvine she lived among strangers, unable to speak their language . . . . There was so little left from her old life . . . . But she described (it) with such clarity and vividness that I knew all those memories lived on inside her” (pages 48-49).

My wish for Torontonians, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, is to cultivate the enjoyment of our lives in the present. With a mindful spirit of inclusion, belonging, and community, we are invited to read Midnight at the Dragon Café together.

Categories
Artwork General

How the Flower-Hatted Otters Collage Came to Be

IMG_8185In March 2011, my friend Ellen Jaffe and I facilitated an art workshop called “Collage Your Animal Spirit Guide” at Fermata’s Music Therapy Centre in Hamilton. Using the animal oracle deck pictured above, each of the participants selected a card without looking at the illustrated side. Then we took turns reading the teachings of the animals whose cards we’d chosen.

Illustration by Bill Worthington
Illustration by Bill Worthington

My animal guide for the day was the otter. According to Carr-Gomm’s explanatory booklet, otter “invites us to play, to ‘go with the flow’ of life and experience — to become a child again” (32).

Flower-Hatted Otters, Catherine Raine 2011
Flower-Hatted Otters, Catherine Raine 2011

Trying to capture the idea of flow and movement, I found some swirling fish and active grasses. For playfulness, I gave the otters and their fish friend some red flower hats.

Flower Hatted Otters, Catherine Raine 2011
Flower Hatted Otters, Catherine Raine 2011

And that’s the story of how the Flower-Hatted Otters came to be!

Categories
General TPL Talks and Programs

Flourishing Knitting Circle at Kennedy/Eglinton

I dropped into my home branch, Kennedy/Eglinton, this evening to pick up a book on hold (Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler). As I passed the open door of the program room, a jolly sight met my eyes. Members of the Tuesday evening knitting circle were closely gathered around several tables. Deeply engaged in conversation and textile production, this multigenerational and multicultural group of knitters numbered about twelve.

The sign outside the door listed the meeting time as 6-8 pm and informed participants that they needed to bring their own yarn and needles. Refreshments would be provided on the house.

Thank you for brightening my evening, Kennedy/Eglinton knitters! Your presence infused the entire building with warm community spirit!

Categories
Artwork General

Henrietta the Via Rail Clump

Henrietta joined me on the train to Quebec after taking shape from a sock, part of a tie, a headband and a frayed shoelace. She enjoys rail travel.