Territories

Northwest Territories by minouette

I got a really interesting message from a customer this week. After purchasing my Northwest Territories and Nunavut linocuts, he let me know why. The Collège André Malraux de Granville in France has created an 'artothèque' (great word no? like a bibliothèque or library, except for art) on the theme of territories. They've gathered art from 13 artists from France, Algeria, Canada and Ukraine. My prints will be representing Canada!

I love that my prints are making their way in to some institutional collections and the idea of international artists representing what 'territories' mean to them is fascinating. I'd love to see what else they've purchased.

Nunavut by minouette

NWT

The symbols of the Northwest Territories, its territorial symbols the gyrfalcon and mountain avens flowers cover the hand-carved linocut map of NWT. The block was inked 'à la poupée' (with different colours, gray-brown, green and yellow, in different areas) and printed by hand on lovely Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. Each print is 23.5 cm by 31.8 cm (9.25" by 12.5"). The print is one of a variable edition of eight.

NWT is one of three Canadian territories, sandwiched between the Yukon to the west, and Nunavut to the east. Its waters currently include the Earth's North Magnetic Pole. Bodies of water shown include Great Bear Lake, the largest lake entirely within Canada, and Great Slave Lake, the deepest body of water in North America at 614 m, as well as the mighty Mackenzie River. In Inuktitut, the Northwest Territories are referred to as ᓄᓇᑦᓯᐊᖅ (Nunatsiaq), "beautiful land". (I love other alphabets and syllabaries).

The Gyrfalcon, also spelled gerfalcon (Falco rusticolus) is the largest of the falcon species and are found throughout the tundra, including all the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. This beautiful bird of prey has been an official symbol of NWT since 1990. The mountain avens (Dryas octopetala, common names include white dryas, and white dryad) is an arctic-alpine flowering plant which grows on a small prostrate evergreen subshrub forming large colonies. It grows abundantly in the eastern and central Arctic, as well as in parts of the Mackenzie River.

I've had the great priviledge of having seen much of this country and having travelled from coast to coast. (I am still hoping to visit the third coast). I have yet to visit any of the territories, despite my best efforts. Some of my research, in my day job as a scientist, relates to the Mackenzie Delta. I've spent many hours looking at maps of this region and one day, I hope to see it in person.

I've now completed all 3 territories and 10 provinces, which I wanted to do before the OOAK. I might make a Canada print too... but not before the show.

Manitoba

I've followed up my home province print with the home province of my mother: Manitoba.
The provincial animal the bison and flower the prairie crocus (Anemone patens) cover the hand-carved map of Manitoba in this linocut. The block was inked 'à la poupée' (with different colours, pale violet, umber and brown, in different areas) and printed by hand on lovely Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. Each print is 23.5 cm by 31.8 cm (9.25" by 12.5"). The print is one of an edition of seven.

It's no mystery how the bison could symbolize this prairie province. Manitoba is one of the few places where one can still find free-ranging herds of woods and plains bison. The early spring flower, Anemone patens, known as the "Prairie Crocus" was chosen by the school children as the floral emblem of the province in 1906. I imagined a bison roaming a field replete with prairie crocuses. I was sure to include Lake Winnepeg, Lake Manitoba through Lake Winnipegosis to Cedar Lake and even Reindeer Lake, because they are part of the arc of immense lakes extending from the Great Lakes which are cut into the fabric of this country.

T. Rex with Flowers

So, I made another mini print (10 cm by 10 cm; or 3.9 inches by 3.9 inches for you metric hold-outs). RJH said, "Fierce, but pretty, just like you."

"That's right," I told him.



It's a Tyrannosaurus amongst flowers. The block is 10 cm by 10 cm (3.9 inches by 3.9 inches), inked à la poupée (i.e. one block inked in more than one colour, in tiny regions, like as by a little doll our 'poupée'). It is printed on 14 cm by 14 cm (7.1 inch by 7.1 inch) unryu or 'Cloud Dragon' Japanese washi paper, a beautiful tissue with visible silky fibres. Variations in the paper makes each print in the edition of 12 rather unique.

Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin, "tyrant lizard"), commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a well known giant Cretaceous dinosaur with tiny arms, which roamed North America up to the end of the dinosaur age at the the Cretaceous–Tertiary mass extinction event, 65.5 million years ago. Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land predators of all time. Flowering plants evolved, spread, and began to dominate towards the end of the Cretaceous, so though whimsical in nature, the imagined scene isn't actually impossible.






And, a variation on a theme:


Tomorrow, RJH, my brother the DJ and his wife, and for all I know one or more of my step-sisters, will be running the half-marathon. Actually, L could be running the full marathon for all I know. I feel strange to be surrounded by such perverse behaviour so many runners, but I'm proud of them.

Roaming Victoria

This is my favorite store. That's it. The entire store was once a windowfront. It isn't very deep, but it is high and they are very agile with hooks and poles to reach clothing displayed 10 ft off the ground.





This building has great bones. I cannot understand why it isn't renovated yet. It has been like this for years and it's on the water, for heaven's sake. Great location.


The flowers are everywhere.


Capital Iron parking lot. I love Capital Iron. Apparently, it's genetic. My grandmother (who died when I was only three) loved Capital Iron.





This is the view from Dallas Rd. The dark shadow behind the Straight of Georgia is the Olympic mountains in Washington state.


This is a crow on the beach at Cadboro Bay. I did not see the Cadborosaurus.

wandering Amsterdam part I

We left our workshop at 3:30 pm and ran to catch the ferry to the mainland. We missed the bus connection to the train station, so we took cabs and ended up on the 4 pm train to Amsterdam, with the slowpokes who missed the ferry. The funny thing was that with the exception of a couple of locals our train car was filled with visiting scientists. The Scandinavians all sat together (perhaps because a Belgian teased them that it must already be dark at home). We sat in the Canadian-German-English-Belgian group. Then there was a foreigners-who-work-in-the-UK (Kiwis and Canucks, mainly) group behind us. I enjoyed our conversation and getting to see a little more of the townships and countryside in the daylight. Though conversations started with the usual topics (i.e. science from the meeting, are Canadians really different from Americans and how long was my flight home, language issues) it became quite animated. The Belgians were Flemish so they translated the announcements for us. They wanted to know how our language differed. They claimed that Québecois french was incomprehensible and I argued that it really depended, though I acknowledged that sometimes it was 16th century and people drove their char rather than their auto. The only English Canadian word I could think of was ribbit, which lead to a crazy conversation about sounds animals make in different languages. Also, strangely, none of them knew the word meme, and thought I had made it up.


After reaching Amsterdam and taking a streetcar to our hotel (in the same neighbourhood as our houseboat from the last trip), we found an Indonesian restaurant, one of the benefits to Holland of their former colony. We were going to go for a beer, but passed a theatre and randomly decided to watch Revolutionary Road. Then Saturday, we mainly wandered and shopped till dinner.



Check out the fist door knob, and requisite bikes.

Ernie and Bert down the alleyway...


The necessary tulips (even if artificial) where we stopped for coffee on a canal.

There was a beautiful Art Nouveau style restaurant in this hotel.





I returned to the Jordaan, because I enjoyed walking there previously. There are many shops and galleries, and artisans working in felt.