I think I was looking for my photograph archives from a trip I took with my son, the summer of 2009, when I came upon some images from the end of the teaching year and celebrations with my students; specifically, my grade nine art students, our life sized sculpture exhibit and my grade seven home room.
It was that year that I invited my students to bring in a special object for our prayer table…so, every Monday, it would be the next person’s turn. It started with me…and a stone. Jarrett Alley, a former student of mine, had passed away in 1997 at the age of 13. His place in the classroom was two rows back, but directly across from the framed article that remained, for all of my teaching years, a tribute to his life.
I think I always intended to copy and pass on a photo to each student at the end of that year, but evidently that never happened!
I’m going to loop the photographs here. My students, of over thirty years of teaching, remain in my heart.
For the most part, I am out of touch with these students, so if my readers know any of them, please share.
The Westmount Independent, a local paper in a Montreal suburb, ran a wee article on Tuesday, seeking out a boy in this photograph.
It turns out that a friend of one of the Walls boys, might just be the candidate! She is taking the article to Mr. Walls, who is reported as in good health, to view the image today and will get back to me. :0) I’m pretty happy that we may have made a connection here. Stay tuned!
Solid wood…some sort of press. Initially, I thought I was buying a flower press, but when I got home I found out that this is a flower press. And from what I can tell, after looking, while they are very different in appearance, most flower presses accommodate several layers and so include a clamping system of some sort.
So, what is this?
It is made out of hardwood and is definitely crafted by a carpenter. It is heavy and intended to press something…but what? I’m impressed by the design and the construction of this item!
Help would be appreciated. And yes…there is a bag full of items sitting in the back of my car waiting to be dropped at the Women In Need shop. For every curiosity that comes into my house, there’s a rule that three objects have to leave.
Thanks to my friends…I’ve learned that this is a vintage tortilla press. Whoot! Very cool!
The Esker Foundation opened its doors for a sculpture workshop on Saturday. Working with concepts and cardboard, the day was a celebration of invention. Laura Vickerson met with us, first, in the darkened theater where our eyes feasted on a collection of images; sculptures created by former students. I have never thought in three dimensions and signed up for this workshop as a way of moving out of my comfort zone and into space and form.
(I also forgot my camera.)
I wish that I had photographs of the cyclone of cardboard pieces! The Esker had all materials and tools nicely laid out upon our arrival…caddies filled with straight edges and X-Acto knives, saws and such….stacks of cardboard boxes of every sort…a glue gun section with generous loads of glue sticks. It was a dream come true for a creative! WHOOT!
As preparation, on Friday evening, I perused Laura Vickerson’s website and thought a little about paper. I’ve been working extensively on genealogy and knew that I would be dealing with memory, nostalgia and family some how…blood lines, as inspired by several authors I’ve been reading, memoir. I just didn’t know what would be happening.
I also read snippetts on line from a context that Laura would be using as motivation for the work, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
As I went about the house harvesting my own collection of boxes, I knew that the labels were very distracting to me and wanted, already, to minimize the messages that were so dominant AND irritating. I knew in the morning that I would bring along my bucket of gesso...and even applied a first layer to some boxes before eating my breakfast and while drinking my first coffee.
In the dark theater, I liked the topographical handling of foam core in a few of the student works we saw. Given more time, I really wanted to build a model of land forms in just that way, but knew that it would be a monumental task for a single day.
The sort of impact I would like to create…given more time.
Laura was very supportive. In her first go-round she seemed to be most interested in observing whether or not we would be using the tools safely. I know that I would be nervous in a room surrounded by artists carrying knives. Gradually we all hit our groove…once the anxiety around ‘an idea’ filtered out and we tore into the experience.
Thanks to Doug Haslam and Esker Foundation for taking photographs of my sculpture.
Photo Credit: Doug Haslam and Esker Foundation
Photo Credit: Doug Haslam and Esker Foundation
Photo Credit: Doug Haslam and Esker Foundation
Photo Credit: Doug Haslam and Esker Foundation.
I could not help but look around me and marvel at the huge variety of approaches that were taken. I was so impressed with some folk and their ability to manipulate the materials to create crisp, balanced forms. While my piece feels unfinished, I am delighted with the direction it was taking and with the sorts of things that I learned about myself through the process.
Thanks to Laura Vickerson for her inspiring session and for listening to me as I muddled my way along. So generous!
