Category: Arts & Culture
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Joyce Frances Devlin: Painter & A Painted House
As part of the Jane’s Walk Burritt’s Rapids community festival, Ms. Devlin will be exhibiting select pieces in the main gallery space of the Burritt’s Rapids Community Hall on May 2nd & May 3rd, 2015. ********* If I had any sense, I would pound a wooden stake into my front lawn, attach a five kilometre length of string, and scribe… Read more
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Marie Watt: Piecing Together A Story
It was my first community sewing circle. I couldn’t have chosen a better introduction than the one I received from Marie Watt, a Portland, Oregon-based artist whose storied circles bring creative ideas to life. A half-dozen tables bisected the Great Hall of the National Galley of Canada, arranged beneath the canopy of glass and steel that frames the finest views in Ottawa. … Read more
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Walking the Carleton Place Labyrinth
We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us – the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to… Read more
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Ellis Island: JR and the Art of Immigration
The United States, like Canada, is a country of immigrants. Between 1892 and 1954, twelve million citizens of other nations landed at Ellis Island seeking asylum in their new homeland. Close to 40% of Americans can trace their genealogy through these early immigrants. ((http://www.history.com/topics/ellis-island)) There are two kinds of Ellis Island tours available. The first is a free… Read more
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Three Days, Two Skates and One Big Apple
In my rural village of a hundred souls we wait for a deep spell of cold, with little snowfall, to produce sturdy, pristine ice on the canal. Our natural rinks, spontaneously cleared by locals, last a few hours or a few days, eventually kiboshed by fluctuating temperatures, freezing rain or heavy snowpack. But while they last, those… Read more
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What a Fleurt
Excerpt from A Tale of Two Hotels: The Gladstone (Part 1), November 2011 We were lodged in Room 303, the Red Room (or the ‘REDRUM’ as I joked in my best Jack Nicholson voice), designed by Kate Austin and Kristin Ledgett of RUCKUS. It was, all at once, intimate, stylish and homey… In a strange small-world occurrence on Friday, I… Read more
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Winnipeg: Stuck in the Middle
A couple of days ago I posted a piece trumpeting Winnipeg’s virtues and shortly after this appeared: https://twitter.com/HolmesDoug/status/525013976028311552 Of course I dove into winnipeglovehate.com, and discovered the book Stuck in the Middle: Dissenting Views of Winnipeg, photographed and written by the dynamic duo of Bryan Scott and Bartley Kives. Thanks to the miracle of strangers on the internet… Read more
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Winnipeg is the Most Interesting City
Over dinner last week in Manhattan I declared to our three local hosts that Winnipeg is The Most Interesting City in Canada. They appeared politely skeptical as I tried to explain. I’ve written about the city before here, here, here, here, and here, praising it up one side and down the other. I can easily list the qualities I… Read more
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The Color of Water
What a deceptively simple way to capture the colors of a seasonally changing river in an historic/site-specific installation. Not that I hadn’t walked this portion of the High Line before, it just took a fourth go to stop me in my tracks. I might have to try this at home with my own river… ************ The River That Flows Both… Read more
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Bethesda Terrace’s Magical Minton Ceiling
Like other great cities, New York is a museum unto itself. It is possible to visit and never set foot inside any building – save for your hotel – and come away filled to the aesthetic brim. It’s all eye candy: the people, the architecture, the street art, the signs of wear, seasonal changes, the movement of everything, the… Read more