Art

Scent and Touch

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Kingsbrae 9.4
9 June 2017

Scent and Touch

A feather upon the cheek,
this fern frond held
fragile, hesitant
between fine fingers.

Touch and smell:
two senses engaged.
A paint brush sounds,
brush-brushing lightly
the expectant skin.

Faint the taste tested
suggestive
on tongue tip.
No sight, just insight.

I have a sense of senses lacking.
My words reach out like fingers,
but they can neither retain
nor explain the meaning of it all.

Comment: “Built in cooperation with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Scents and Sensitivity Garden is dedicated to the memory of St. Andrews’ resident Albert McQuoid. The garden features raised beds that allow handicapped, sight impaired, and wheelchair bound visitors the opportunity to enjoy the feel, and scent, of the plants and flowers right within arms’ reach.”

Love Spoon

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Kingsbrae 9.1
9 June 2017

Love Spoon

Celtic the Knot
binding heart and soul
the love spoon
carved
by caring hands

Sharp moon blade
honed by the wind
white
wooden clouds
flowing against
dark sky grain

Sweet surge
time and tide
tied together
knotted
our heart strings
twisted our love
forever in this
Celtic Knot

Comment: Celtic Knot is the name of one of the more formal gardens at Kingsbrae. It is also one of the symbols carved into Welsh Love Spoons and signifies eternal love. Carving the love spoon was one of the traditional tasks given to the young man when he asked for the hand of his beloved in marriage. In addition to showing craftsmanship and woodcarving skill, the task of carving the wood spoon kept the young man’s hands occupied while he was courting. Parents would then be able to check on the progress of the love spoon and ensure that their daughter’s virtues were in safe and trustworthy hands.

Poetic Process: Thursday Thoughts

Kingsbrae 8.3
8 June 2017

Poetic Process: Thursday Thoughts

The end result of the poetic process, however we define it, is the poem. Whether the poem be good, indifferent or bad, depends on a set of critical value judgments of which the poet may or may not be aware at the time of writing. The end product must be allowed to look after itself. But what about the process?

The question is simple, but the answer is more difficult, because the actual nature of the process will vary with each one of us. If the end point is the poem, how do we write the poem, what is its starting point? Is it when we sit down to write? Is it when the pen nib (yes, I still write the old-fashioned way) makes contact with the paper? Is there a pre-writing starting point and if so, where does that begin? Is it in the poet’s head, or the poet’s eyes? Does it reside in touch or scent? Good questions: no answers other than the failsafe … it depends.

One thing that has emerged from this KIRA retreat is that above all we need time to be artists. Art and poetry take time, and artists, whatever their medium, need time to think, time to practice, time to splash paint on canvas, time to sit down and put their head in their hands and meditate … “What is this life,” writes W. H. Davies, the great Welsh poet, “if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

Elise Muller came up with an interesting exercise for developing self-expression. “Write down a question with your dominant hand,” she said. “Then answer it by writing with your less dominant hand.” I tried this. “What do you mean by writing process?” my right hand asked. My right hand held the pen about half an inch from the page and made me stop … and think. I thought about the critical analyses, usually ultra-academic, that I had written and read over the years. Then I started to organize them into do’s and don’ts. The thoughts of certain serious writers sprang to mind … then I switched my pen to my left hand.

Uncontrolled, uncontrollable thoughts came tumbling out and spilled off the end of the pen on to the empty page that rapidly filled with visual and verbal images: evening falls and the stars grow into flowers in the darkness … three deer enter an empty field and dance on the dandelions … the sky fills with snowflakes that erase, one by one, all the objects in the yard … the tide flows back in and the bay recovers its memories of silver fish beneath the waves … the half -empty / half-full glass becomes meaningless: its essence is to filter the sunshine and to sparkle with light … clouds gather into small, wooly herds and the wind chases them across the sky …

To be filled with poetry and creativity we must first be emptied of the cares of the world. Then, when our heads are empty and free there is space for them to fill with the most beautiful images and ideas. This creative process needs time. Time to download and forget our worries. “Time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep and cows” (W. H. Davies again). Time to be ourselves. Time tobe. Time to become one with nature.

To gain this state of freedom, we need to be free of financial cares and woes. We need to escape from domestic duties. We need to be alone (when we need to be alone) and among friends of a like mind (when we need company). “The time to see when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass” (W. H. Davies, yet again). So, in the poetic process, we need that freedom to create, to cut the ties that bind so tightly, to walk and watch and stop and stare. When that old, tired head is empty, the poetry will flow back in. And it will be a poetry not of grinding ideas but of dancing metaphors and sparkling words. “A dull life this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

KIRA has gifted me with this time, this quality time. Clare and the WYPOD and my Fictional Friends and the Thursday Grunts and my fellow New Brunswick writers have encouraged me to take advantage of it. The process is in process. Some of the results are already being seen on these pages.

My thanks to all those who made this adventure possible. I would also like to thank all those who now facilitate this process every day.

Words

Kingsbrae 8, 2
8 June 2017

Words

Here, on the seashore,
the whisper of waves,
splashed with a flash of sun,
wind fingering the hair,
the light a delight,
and wordless this world
though its beauty be
configured in words.

The scything of the sea,
the land seized in snippets,
grey stones, red rocks,
gelatinous mudflats
blue on white striations.

Seagull wings
snipping celestial ribbons,
salt caked keen on lips,
sea weed scents sensed
yet never seen.

Captivated we stand here,
unattached our single wings,
save to this singular beauty:
peregrine the falcon soul,
so solitary as it soars.

Comment: So many of these new poems are just that, “new” and “raw”. Words, for example, is just a couple of hours old. That is the gift of time that I have been given. The writing process is so rapid that there is little time to digest the last thought and image sequence, before the next comes tumbling along. I guess it’s just a question of rolling merrily along and we’ll see later what we still think is fit for survival. The selecting of these poems will be an interesting task … and who will select the selectors …

Flute

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Carlos Carty Making Magic

Kingsbrae 8.1

Flute
(for Carlos Carty)

Songs without words:
a black alpaca rolling on green grass,
two deer dashing across the lawn,
three Indian Runner Ducks actually running,
four tents, canopies billowing beneath the sun,
Passamaquoddy stretched out before me,
a dark island stark in the bay,
sunlight descending a ladder of cloud.

Song without words without end:
music of wind through rock,
waves lapping against stones,
a breeze tapping rhythm from river reeds,
plucked and pierced, the reeds:
the world’s first flute.

Life and breath are one.
The young man opening the water bottles,
sipping the right amount, pursing his lips,
blowing into the bottle neck,
making sweet music:
a song of joy.

Visitors

Kingsbrae 7.1
7 June 2017

Visitors

Bees to flowers,
they come to visit,
their sojourns just as brief.

Hummingbirds hovering,
they push pointed noses
here and there.

How much and what
will they understand?

Perhaps they retain
an impression of raindrops
falling, or dust motes rising
to dance in the sunlight.

Maybe my words
will sting like tiny blackfly
and leave small red bites
that will burn with a wild
itch to hear more words.

Stone Carving

Elise

Elise in her Studio

Kingsbrae 6.2
6 June 2017

Stone Carving
Elise Muller

Last night, Elise Muller led the second of our after supper artistic discussions. She told how her grandmother had been a sculptor, but had never talked to her directly about stone sculpting. Later, when at art school, Elise took a course on stone carving and knew immediately that it was what she wanted to do. Something appealed to her and she was hooked.

Elise then showed us a series of photographs that displayed her sculptures in chronological order. She talked about each one individually, the stone from which it was carved, the manner in which she carved, and the effects she was trying to achieve. Movement interested her and she was trying to sculpt a series of movements into her stonework. Her early sculptures featured different forms of movement, fathers and mothers carrying their children, a woman wading, and so on. At this early stage movement was present, but it was not conceived as an intentional thematic link between sculptures. Her later sculptures, some commissioned, some made for friends and family, were conscious attempts at carving movement into stone.

A statue called Ballerina was sculpted by Elise for her grandfather and shows her own daughter dancing. The slender figure moves elegantly, poised and posed in stone. A companion piece, Ballerino, shows a male figure dancing. Even a perched bird, a Whisky Jack or Grey Jay, carved in stone and perched on a stone pedestal, leans forward in a moment caught by the camera that photographed the stone. Movement, caught in still stone and photos, is everywhere in the later sculptures. Looking at them, time stands still and the stone flows.

Open discussion followed and we chatted about the healing qualities of crystals and how stones too held their magnetism and personalities. Elise talked about the different types of stone, the various marbles, soapstone, granite, and we discussed the fundamental cost of the actual stone, before it was even turned into the work of art. Elise told us how she was attracted to different types of stone and how the raw material would “call” her and attract her attention. Sometimes, she said, she drew her ideas from the stone, however, on other occasions, she would sketch what she wanted to carve and then find a stone that would be suitable. This latter method she associated more with her commissioned work. Elise also told us about the effect of weather upon stone and how some stones could be left outside in sun, rain, and snow, while others needed more protection.

Art lag, something similar to jet lag, but far more pleasant, was setting in and, a weary group, we adjourned early, leaving behind, with regret, some wonderful ideas and memories, but taking with us images Elise’s creative techniques and mind pictures of the creations that Elise had plucked from her stones.

Small Corner

Kingsbrae 6.1
6 June 2017

Small Corner

And this is the good thing,
to find your one small corner
and to have your one small candle,
then to light it, and leave it burning
its sharp bright hole in the night.

Around you, the walls you constructed;
inside, the reduced space, the secret garden,
the Holy of Holies where roses grow
and no cold wind disturbs you.

“Is it over here?” you ask: “Or over here?”

If you do not know, I cannot tell you.

But I will say this: turning a corner one day
you will suddenly know
that you have found a perfection
that you will seek again, in vain,
for the rest of your life.

Journal: I had the pleasure of reading this poem to the artists and committee of the KIRA program after the evening barbeque on Saturday, 3 June, 2017. It is indeed a Golden Oldie, but it summarizes with remarkable accuracy my own feelings about Kingsbrae and the surrounding area. There are places of peace within the world and, as our world becomes more crowded and our cities overflow with urgency, these peaceful places take on more and more importance. It is essential for us to escape the concrete and tarmac of the so-called civilization and to take refuge in nature. The cultivated garden has a long tradition going back to Medieval times, le jardin enclos and its sacred space, for example, and the monastery cloisters and their enclosed serenity,

Following in this tradition, Kingsbrae Gardens has established an oasis of cultivated peace within the larger peaceful space that is New Brunswick. We are indeed lucky to be permitted to enter these places, to renew our contact with nature in all its beauty and bounty, and to be able to refresh our spirits and drink deep of the peace that flows, and fills us, and blesses our endeavors.

The photo that accompanies this poem is of the crab apple trees in full blossom on the front lawn of the house in Island View where Clare and I have lived and worked together for a quarter of century or more. This is the view from my writing room window. It is no wonder that poetry flows from this subtle spring beauty.

Encaustic

Anne Mist

Mist Lifting Over The Bay
Anne Wright

Kingsbrae 4.3
4 June 2017

Encaustic
Anne Wright

Anne Wright led the first after supper discussion for KIRA June 2017. She talked about her voyage of discovery into the world of art and explained how she envisioned herself as an abstract expressionist who attempted to place mood, emotion, and feeling into her art work. She showed us examples of her latest works, greeting cards with a combination of pressed flowers and artwork. She also presented three ‘works in progress’ from her encaustic collection. These have a wonderful tactile quality and seeing them and then touching them gave two very different impressions of her art.

Anne also talked about art as a communion with the unconscious. This may be understood as that which is not yet known or revealed, but is waiting to be given expression. Art and poetry are the language of the soul, and so can capture something instinctively, before it gains open expression. Words and the meaning into which they distill often come much later and that, according to Anne, is the process of crystallizing the narrative of our lives. Sometimes, as artists, we enter art in order to probe more deeply into ourselves and to discover that which is within us. Anne then led our group into a deeper discussion of this residency and what each one of us, starting with herself, wished to achieve while at Kingsbrae.

Carlos intervened at this point and suggested that we should distinguish between ‘process’ and ‘result’. With our nightly conversations we are working on the process of how we act and think as artists. Our creativity is in a process of change and this residency gives us time to think and re-think ourselves and thus to concentrate on the how and why we create. In addition, we have time in the individual creative periods to experiment with our creative process. The ‘results’ may be seen as a short term product, i.e. what we produce today, this week, this month, or as a long-term process, i.e. how we grow and develop in a future of which we may not not yet be aware.

Elise responded to this with the story of how she had pushed herself in her sculpting and had, as a result, accidentally broken her own stonework. This was the result of trying to carve a thin, delicate figure from stone. Her effort to create movement in static stonework led to a further discussion into how we attempt to place movement into two dimensional paint. This in turn led to a discussion of classical art with its formality and its entry points versus a more modern art that has no entry point and less formal construction. This responds in part to the twin aspects of reproducing the visual, external world versus creating a new, internal world that represents the inner workings of the artist’s and, by extension, the viewer’s, mind. In this way, what the viewer / reader / listener sees / reads / hears is as important (almost!) as what the creative artist creates.

Ruby spoke of her own art as a narrative line that led into a painting and told, through her painting, a story of her subjects. She spoke of her adventures on the quay where she had spoken with various people and asked permission to photograph and paint them. The contrasts between our different views on our distinct creative methods and how we create / imitate / reproduce / react with our various versions of the world were most interesting. This is an aspect of our residency that will grow and strengthen. It will play a large part in what we are now calling, thanks to Carlos’s intervention, the ‘artistic process’. Needless to say, we are all growing and developing and our creative worlds are growing with us.

Plein Air

Ruby 2.JPG

Kingsbrae 5.3
5 June 2017

Plein Air
(for Ruby Allan)

“Plein air,” she said,
and I imagined her
sitting before the blank
spread of a canvas,
a ship’s sail waiting
for a sea-side breeze
to fill that empty space
with color and mood.

What routes will
her paintbrush take
as it wanders
over the new world
lying before her?

Plein air, al fresco,
in garden and street,
before the shops and then
on headland and shore,
alone or accompanied,

with sea birds wading
and the gull’s cry echoing
its sea of sound as the sun
sets in its bonfire of brightness
and throws light and shadow,
chiaro-oscuro, all around.

Journal: Above Ruby’s poem, there is a photo of her Kingsbrae studio with a new painting waiting for her on the easel. To my mind, this particular photo is very reminiscent of Dali’s paintings of paintings within paintings, all seen from different perspectives. Alas, the photo will not sell for as much money as a genuine Dali.

Among other things, we discussed the value, versus the price, of art last night. It seems that some paintings are sold at so many dollars per square inch. I find this very interesting. I told the story of how I give away my books to friends. Occasionally I find those same books, signed with suitable, individual sentiments expressed, on sale in the second-hand book stores I frequent. It is sad, and in a way very funny, to think that something I give away for free ends up earning money (a) for the recipient who received and accepted it as a gift and then sells it to the second-hand bookstore and (b) for the bookstore owner, whom I may or may not know, who buys the book second-hand and sells it on to a customer.

Ruby and Anne both told similar stories with regard to paintings that artistic friends of theirs had painted. It brought us to question the whole nature and value of the art we produce. Value, of course, is not something that has, of necessity, a dollar tag attached to it. Art for art’s sake and therapeutic art, for example, have different values both for the creators and the admirers of such art. As Oscar Wilde once phrased it: “To know the price of everything and the value of nothing” and value, like beauty, is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.