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Dandelions ‘eulogized’ by Rainforest featured artist


American philosopher and naturist Ralph Waldo Emerson eulogized weeds as plants ‘whose virtues have not been discovered.

It’s in that spirit that Artist Diana Durrand portrays the common dandelion (Taraxacum Officinale), using bold paintings, delicate drawings and elegant sculptures, all intended to override our entrenched suburban bias against this much maligned species.

Her tribute, 100 Sleeping Dandelions, will be on display at Rainforest Arts, Chemainus, B.C. where Diana Durrand will be Featured Artist  for the months of March and April.

“From root to flower the dandelion is an edible, useful plant, its medicinal properties common knowledge among herbalists the world over,” Durrand says.

Yet, universally categorized as a noxious weed by homeowners and gardeners, the dandelion is mown down, poisoned and uprooted whenever it pops up on North American lawns, its hardy, prolific and incredibly adaptable nature the only things keeping the species from eradication.

“With this eclectic body of work my goal is to represent the many aspects of the dandelion I have experienced, from my earliest delights as a child, to the nihilistic adult attitude that has been cultivated by the home & garden industry,” Durrand says.

“I’m hoping viewers can tap into some of their own childhood memories of picking, smelling, tasting and exchanging dandelions.”

Is the dandelion an ‘invasive species’, introduced to North America and the rest of the world by the planet’s most pervasive invader, European Homo Sapiens; or is it a hardy, totally edible plant that has adapted to its new environments and flourished against all odds, to the benefit of human kind?

100 Sleeping Dandelions will shed some golden light on that question. You can preview the works at DianaDurrand.com

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Artist draws viewers Into the Stillness

Arts & Culture

Who knows where the wellsprings of creativity might be found? Growing up on a farm near the hamlet of Carlea, Saskatchewan, Patt Scrivener used to cycle to spot where a culvert flowed under the Canadian National Railway tracks, forming a pond that stayed throughout the summer. It was her ‘secret place,’ where she could go and ‘reflect’.

Into the Stillness, her feature exhibit at Rainforest Arts, which runs from Jan. 11 to Feb. 28, reminds her of that place, which is to say, even if it’s not the sole source of inspiration, it’s certainly a tributary she can trace, inviting people to join in her meditations.

“Water, for me anyways, takes me to a place of calmness and stillness, and a place of inner reflection, and I would hope with the paintings, that people will be able to look into them and be able to go to that place themselves,” Scrivener said. “Into the Stillnessis about going on that journey to that quiet, reflective place.”

Getting there on canvas isn’t the same as jumping on your bike and pedaling down the road. In fact, Scrivener says her scenes are more a geography of mind than representations of actual places. Her techniques bear that out.

She rarely works from photographs, and her process isn’t representational. The first step she takes, confronted with whitespace, is to ‘activate the canvas’. “I work very freely and loosely to begin with,” she said. “It just means taking the canvas from pure, blank white to having some action-marks on it.”

Brushes, pencils, spatulas, scrapers – Scriveners’ ‘mark-making’ tool kit is just as likely to include implements you’d buy at Canadian Tire as Opus Art Supplies. That’s not to say she’s just spreading paint randomly. Before the paint goes down, she sets her intentions, bringing to mind what she wants to emerge. “Those things are going to start showing up, because you’re thinking about it and you’re putting down paint in such a way that it might lead to where you’re going.”

‘Might’ is the operative word. You have to have a lot of faith in the process, and a willingness to let go. Asked if the process is sort of like jumping out of an airplane, without a parachute, hoping one will materialize, she said: “That would be a pretty good analogy.” The trick is to ‘not worry about the results,’ trust in the process, and have some fun pushing paint around, believing what you’re looking for will emerge.

She calls it ‘getting into the flow.’

“Once I get the canvas covered in lots of information, I start homing into my intuition to see if I see something, or a feeling, and then I start developing the painting based on that.” The artist’s intentions materialize through a process that opens up to their possibilities.  “I believe that the paintings come through me, if I allow it and that’s a lot about allowing, and trusting, and believing, and allowing you to get into that flow state.”

Scrivener is the featured artist at Rainforest Arts – 9871 Willow Street, Chemainus in the Coastal Community Credit Union building – from Jan. 11 through to the end of February. Rainforest Arts is open seven days a week, 11a.m. to 4p.m. She will be holding an artist’s talk Jan 17 at 11 a.m., and demos Jan. 17 and Feb. 14 from 12:30 to 3 p.m. (in the Coastal Community Credit Union). More at RainforestArts.caor 250-246-4861.

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Harvest time, a time for thanks giving

 

Editorial

We’ll be sitting down to various versions of Thanksgiving Dinner Oct. 8, but no matter what traditions are followed in your home, one theme runs through the day for most everyone: We’re giving thanks for the bounty of the land we live on.

In one way or another, that translates into thanks to the people who harvest the bounty of that land, people who are too often not recognized or understood in our increasingly urbanized world.

No matter how far removed we are from the land, though, we remain wholly dependent on it for survival. So the conversations around our dinner tables might revolve around how the food on our plates gets from the farm, to the market, and into our baskets.

That’s a discussion of especial  importance to this region, where farming is integral to the economy. At Mid-Island Focus we wish you a joyful Thanksgiving, and invite you to continue the conversations about the land and how it’s bounty is harvested throughout the coming year.

If you have a story idea about agriculture, it’s importance to our communities, and how it is evolving in the 21st Century, contact MIF. We’d love to hear from you.

Craig Spence
Editor

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Artist Bryan Wilson’s Fine Line

For artist Bryan Wilson there’s a direct line between his love of the outdoors, and his passion to create art, and it shows up on his canvases. “I fish lots, I love my boating,” he said. “Any time I go out and do the things I love, I’m always thinking about my art.” And gathering inspiration in notebooks, video clips and photos.

But his experiences as an avid angler, who has trekked into BC’s wilderness and travelled to tropical climes in pursuit of a catch, aren’t depicted representationally. Wilson meticulously renders his images in pen and ink drawings, and if you look closely, you will almost always find there’s white space between the thousands of elements that come together in his works like an unimaginably complex puzzle. Continue reading “Artist Bryan Wilson’s Fine Line”

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Pitch for Arts & Culture Centre made by CVCAS

It’s time for the rubber to hit the road, or rather, brushes to meet big-picture canvas, for supporters of an Arts & Cultural Centre in Chemainus.

Spearheaded by the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society Past President Peggy Grigor, who has talked to just about anyone who would listen, the concept of an A&CC will be put the test at a March 6, 7 p.m. meeting in the Chemainus Legion Hall, with a pitch to people with the skills, persuasiveness and drive to make the dream come true, to get behind the initiative.

“All the people I’ve talked to have told me that they love the idea, and that they are in support of it,” Grigor told MIF. “So now we’re asking them to step up with us, and make it happen together.” More to the point, Grigor will be looking for people to volunteer for a board that will be formed to continue pressing forward with a project proponents say will benefit not only Mural Town, but the whole Cowichan Valley Regional District. Continue reading “Pitch for Arts & Culture Centre made by CVCAS”

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Fred Durrand, Veteran

A lot of people in Chemainus know Fred Durrand, my father-in-law. At 93, he’s slowed down some, but still shoulders his pack a few times each week and makes the kilometre-and-a-half trek into town to do his shopping. Fred’s always busy, always out-and-about.

So I thought it would be appreciated, especially as Remembrance Day approaches, to attach some backstory to the amiable, dignified, gentle man who is so kindly treated at the grocery story checkout, the pharmacy and everywhere else he goes in town.

Fred was born in Revelstoke, BC. When you see him sitting in our front yard, his daily pint of warm ale to hand, watching the sun sail over Mount Brenton, or sink behind it, you know he’s reminded of his youth hiking in the mountainous backcountry of the Selkirks, or ski jumping on the lower slope of Mount Revelstoke. Many of Fred’s best stories are from his early Revelstoke days.

But the event that shaped him as a young man was World War II. He enlisted at 18 years-old, fooling the recruiting officer by memorizing the eye chart before taking his physical. He wanted to be a pilot, but when he was rejected for that duty, signed on as a dispatch motorcycle rider. He remembers most the camaraderie of the war, the characters he rode with, made friends with, socialized with.

Without a doubt, though, the most important story of all was his flirtatious encounter with a young Dutch woman Josie Gaarenstroom, the woman who would eventually come to Canada, leaving her family in Amsterdam to marry the man she loved.

Eventually Fred and Josie would have two daughters – Johanna and Diana; he would embark on a career in municipal administration – he worked in Revelstoke’s city hall for many years, then moved to the Coast to become Administrator of Central Saanich; then retire to Victoria, and – two-and-a-half years ago – join us in the move the Chemainus.

Every year Fred attends Remembrance Day services on Nov. 11. His comrades have almost all passed away, but his memories of them, their determination, discipline, sacrifices and antics are vivid. Fred is a man who cherishes his own stories and thinks deeply about the history he’s lived. During his minute’s silence he honours those young soldiers. But his reminisces are always counterbalanced by a deep sense of sadness and anger at the viciousness, futility and senselessness of war.

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Haunted Vancouver Island


In this video Craig Spence, Mid-Island Focus Editor, interviews Shanon Sinn, author of The Haunting of Vancouver Island.

Gord Barney’s ghost didn’t have quite the dramatic flare of Macbeth’s Banquo, who took the seat of honour at his Lord-and-murder’s table, drawing the culprit’s terrified denial, “Thou canst not say that I did it; don’t shake thy gory locks at me!” Nor did he respond to the specter’s appearance with the bulldog suavity of Winston Churchill, who, emerging from a bath during a post-war visit to the White House, was surprised by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, and is reputed to have said coolly: “Mr. President, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

But the Nanaimo retired logger still has a pretty good tale to tell. He had deked downstairs during a friend’s house party to ‘drain my bladder’, but when he looked into the nether bathroom mirror, a withered crone glared back, threatening to scare more than the piss out of him.  “Get out of my house!” the hag shrieked, convincing Barney to evacuated the loo as quick as he could. “I was shocked,” he said. “The music from the living room was blasting, but I heard those five words so clear I’ll never forget them.” He ran upstairs, where he complained to the party’s hostess. “Well that’s not very nice,” she grinned. “I’ll have to have a talk with Lucy when I see her again.” Continue reading “Haunted Vancouver Island”