weekly musings #7: summer smash

             It's been awhile since I touched base with a weekly summary post, and admittedly this is more of an amalgamation of photos over the last two weeks.  I've been mostly just trying to enjoy summer and the brief intervals of warm days we get. This has got to be the worst summer we've had in like, a decade. For example, it's 12 degrees today and I'm wearing double layers and wool socks. What have Newfoundlanders done as a people to deserve this????

the boreal diner: So, Fixed Coffee Company from town has has got a couple people scouting out this area and they're going to be opening full time next summer. But, they've graced us with a taster opening all this week with the most amazing coffee (holla' @pour over) and delicious menu. Think blueberry & brie and mozzarella & pesto sandwiches and spicy black bean tacos. It's going to be such a great addition to the area and at least for a week I'm glad to have coffee that isn't instant shit. 

the gig life: This has been a good summer for me scoring gigs and I've been enjoying playing for artists readings and at art galleries. I keep meeting really incredible artists and getting showered in compliments is good for the ego. Also, bless good tippers. I've been stretching my repertoire to throw in songs I've always really loved but never took the time to learn and it's a really satisfying feeling to finally play them for an audience. 

honorable mentions: ● savoring the sun when we get it ● comfortable, cozy layers on rainy days ● sooky kittens ● bullet proof coffee ● singing duets that I've always wanted to do ● laughing to the point of tears with my sister and her crazy dance moves ● consuming so many podcasts (I'm 20 going on 40-something) ● less makeup days ● re-watching Twin Peaks ● therapeutic letters ● old ladies who give sweet compliments ● doodling future tattoos ● finally registering for ~official~ majors and minor classes (!!!) ● planning my autumn wardrobe ● also, planning the decor for my new room ● new beginnings in general, truly ● good eyebrow days ● quiet reconciliations ● tiny revelations from my nightly writing ● successful gin cocktail experimentations  

link love:  ● Criminal podcast - I'm just linking the whole page with all episodes because it is just so good. Since I finished Serial I was looking for something else to fill my morbid-fascinations void. Podcasts are now my thing to listen to while cooking or doing filing at work.  ● Here is a link you should check out after listening to Criminal Ep. 23. That will give you a more in depth story but these photographs and letters are worth reading for a peek into our weird compulsions surrounding guilt and the supernatural. 

● Truly digging this black summer ensemble. Airy whites, begone. 

● I'm not getting engaged/married any time soon but this ring is pretty much my ideal nuptials jewelry. 

So, that's all from me for now folks, just enjoying this (eerily fast) hazy summer days. Over and out. 

xx.

r. 

deep breathes

I woke up yesterday to a humid, torrential downpour of rain, a leak in my ceiling and a sense of frustration. Newfoundland isn't known for its hot weather, per say, but this July has been particularly cold and wet. I spent all day getting soaked walking back and forth from work and fussing over the leak and tripping over cabin feverish cats who weren't allowed out into the maelstrom of wind and rain. I had forgotten to get groceries and was approaching a very crabby mood when suddenly the rain ceased and sunshine started peaking through the overhanging clouds. 

I had meant to write on this a couple weeks ago when we had another rainy day which led me to a (if not particularly profound) calming realization. Just like yesterday, this day was was an absolute wreckage of wind and rain but later in the evening I went to let out my yowling cat and realized the storm had lifted.
I stepped outside and was struck by bright sunlight filtering through the remnant fog and sparkling water droplets illuminating everything with late evening sunshine. Sitting there with a warm wind breezing over me, I felt something in me relax. 

~

Again, while this may not be a new or particularly enlightened observation it was a reminder of how similar this storm so easily parallels our own struggles. Particularly with Newfoundland weather, which never starts or stops when it's predicted to, I find life is similar. Difficult times, perpetual funks and gloomy hearts seem to last forever, until they don't. One day you wake up breathing a little easier and can marvel at the sunshine again.

As someone who sees more fog than daylight in the run of a year, I always make a point to mentally tuck away these warm days and moments of intention for days when the rain does return. Observe particular things about these days to scribble down and press between book pages to touch on later. A myriad of birdsong coming from wet trees. The particular petrichor that rises from the earth. Water laden plants, dancing with droplets of water. Families of baby ducks enjoying all the new puddles. The feeling of stripping off damp clothes and making tea and changing into pajamas. How silvery wet fields of tall grass look from a distance. Drifting to sleep with drone of water on window pane.

Maybe I am romanticizing it but at least I can find things to be grateful about. Everything is until it's not. And I'd rather focus on small moments of positivity than try vainly to make the dismal moments move faster. It's a waste of time and energy. I think we need to trust ourselves more to do what we do best persevere. I was struck reading a post somewhere that was a gentle reminder that at the end of the day, you are the one who carries you through dark times. No matter how messy, you find a way to come out the other side. Lamenting over the irretrievable keeps one stuck and takes away from the fact that the only thing that we can rely on is things to change and time to continue marching forward. Write letters to your future self, hide compassionate notes for you to find at a later date, anything to remind you that you will not be miserable forever.  That with enough kindness and trust unto yourself, you will indeed get by.  

xx.

r.

Nature Factory - 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects

        Yesterday, foggy, misty and cool for a Newfoundland Saturday in July, I wrapped up in a several layers of brooding, black layers and threw on my Blundstones with some thick socks, for I was off to see  the opening of the newest exhibition at the 2 Rooms contemporary art projects platform. To preface, I've lived in the surrounding area of Duntara for my whole 18 years before moving to St. John's and this was my first time seeing this wonderful and intriguing space. Like I just sort of described, 2 Rooms functions to showcase temporary exhibitions, events, and installations. A lot of the art, but not all of it has ties to Newfoundland in some way so I was enthusiastic to see what had been growing on this scene. The actual building was built in 1881 and is built in the saltbox-style that was so popular in early Newfoundland. Save for the bottom two rooms (which still only have very minimal restorations) the house remains unfinished, with layers of old garish paint interspersed with flakes of old wallpaper and newspaper. The place isn't even insulated, and very much feels skeleton-like. 

         The first few pictures I have here are just random snippets of features of the house itself and tiny portraits of other pieces of art that I saw pinned in tiny corners that weren't part of the feature exhibitions. 

          Here is a link to 2 Room's official website that explains the current exhibit in full: Nature Factory. It'd be tedious to repeat the whole background of each feature here since I can't really say it as succinctly as the artists themselves could describe it. I'd rather just write about my personal impressions and other tidbits I picked up from their talks.

         So these three collages thus far are shots I took of the upstairs interior of the house known as the 'museum' portion. A lot of the work done by the director of 2 Rooms focuses on collected and salvaged pieces, hence the old tools pinned to the wall, random illustrations and collected photography and typography pieces I saw pinned around. She primarily works in watercolour and oils, and those above beetle portraits are hers. I really wanted to buy one, but alas I am poor and they were already purchased.  The overall exhibition had a nature focus and I think she was intending to tie in her table-top collection and other museum pieces to that. Which I think fits really well. From what I understood, she rotates out a variety of collection-style exhibits in the upstairs portion of the house, all centered around a different theme, and I sorely wish I had known about this place sooner so I could have come and seen them.

          The table top collection (or I should say door-top, as it was a salvaged door, I believe) was flora and fauna from Newfoundland, mostly aquatic and nautical themed, like shells, sea pebbles, animal bones, mosses, driftwood, empty crab shells, bird feathers and eggs, dried starfish and more. As someone with a penchant for beach-combing I was fascinated by the sheer amount of each thing she had collected. I have always had a very visceral and emotional affinity to the ocean so all of this really spoke to me and had me having bursts of childhood memories collecting the same things from the beaches around my house.

table top details 1.

table top details 2.  // arranged bones in the stairwell

            Seeing the bones on the shelf, precariously perched above visitors heads in the stairs immediately reminded me of Hannibal, and the recurring stags horns motif. 

seaweed bouquet series

Susan Wood 1. 

Susan Wood 2.

            I really loved Susan Wood's stuff; a collection of 40 stunning ink and watercolour pieces known as 'Specimen'. She collects various insect, animal and flowers and suspends them in her studio to draw in their deceased form. Some (specifically the frog and moth ones) were done by actually inking the specimens themselves onto Washi paper, which is what all the pieces were done on. And, they were layered such that each piece had a lovely waxy, textured appearance to it. Combined with a lovely muted browns, greens and yellows, and the thin line-art reminiscent of Victorian botanical illustrations, I was totally sold. But alas, again I could not afford.

              Probably my favourite series was Thaddeus Holownia's, 'The Terra Nova Suite'. You have to know that most photography of Newfoundland that is on the popular market pretty much looks the same. Over the top, poorly composed HDR friggin' shots of the ocean and trees that do nothing (for me at least) to capture the immensity, the wideness and the quiet splendor that is the natural side of Newfoundland. Within seconds of walking into the lower room and see Thaddeus' pieces, I honestly coudln't stop looking at them. Sadly, I forgot to charge my Canon before coming and was being jostled a bit so the phone shots I got don't do his pictures justice at all.
             He shot these (and a lot of his other series) exclusively on a banquet camera. As the name may suggest, this was a camera type invented to take group pictures of people at banquets. His use of it to shoot landscapes however, does the scale of his subjects total justice. The camera's negative are the same size as the actual photography, 7'x'17 (12'x20' is another version but I don't think he uses that). Regardless, to see them in person really does perfectly capture the quiet and isolated infinity of some Newfoundland spaces. I'm really going on ad nauseam on this point, but one more time: if I had the money, his stuff would be on my wall.

             We were lucky enough after, that Thaddeus trotted out his camera and took a group shot. You have to stand pretty much perfectly still and at one point while he was setting up the group all inexplicably went quiet in unison. For that moment it was just the wind and faint roar of the ocean in our ears. I don't think many people can boast being shot by one of these anymore, but then again I'm not up the news in the photography field so perhaps its more commonly used than I'm aware. Regardless, I liked this shot I quickly managed before he took his own picture. 

            This was my favourite from Sara Angelucci's "Aviary" series. She was the only artist who was unable to make it to the opening, which was a shame because I had a bunch of questions for her. The photographs are made by combining anonymous Victorian "cart-de-visite' portraits she buys off e-Bay with extinct North American birds, via photo manipulation. Her summation of the series is creatures transitioning to ghosts. I thought them whimsical at first but the more I stood and looked at them, the eerier they became. For all of them, the only truly human aspect left to the faces were the eyes and I found their stare unsettling. But I liked them very much nonetheless. 

final few shots of Deb Wickwire's work and other random spots about the house

            I found Deb Wickwire's work to be okay; the image of the codfish as it relates to Newfoundland is a tired one for me, at least in this form. Like great okay, you hung some clay codfish, that's okay as an image but doesn't really speak to the cultural/political ties they have had historically if that's just all you do? I get that it's an intensive process to make them but I still found them merely okay at the end of the day. The fact that each one could pay for a semester's tuition for me also didn't do much to engender any enthusiasm towards them. That came off as expensive for the sake of being expensive to me.

That's pretty much it on this front - phew, what a long, image-heavy post. Hopefully you vicariously enjoyed my experience with 2 Rooms as much as I did.

xx
r.