Slow loris, black bear, second angel
Post #13: William Bauer, Hanna Kristmanson, Morten Schmidt
William Bauer. Poet. (December 1982, Fredericton.) Bill’s paintings: record of a conversation at the annual Bauer/Kristmanson Christmas pancake breakfast on Stanley St.
Bernice K.: Oh, they’re lovely. Does this one have a title?
Bill B: It’s a ‘loris’.
Mark K: Did you build it up with papier maché?
Bill B: Bathroom caulking.
Mark K.: The paintings are very sly.
Bernice K: Aren’t the colours marvelous?
Ho: How did you ever think of ‘Ten World Famous Accordionists’?
Bill B: I paint what I see.
Mark K: Have you thought of selling?
Bill B: I couldn’t part with them.
Nancy B: John and he have an ‘art factory’ down cellar.
Ernest B: It’s a hard school to describe. Post-post-modernist… neo-hyper-cartoonism?
Grace B: See Ern’s sculpture? ‘Santa and his eight Christmas rein-gourds.’
Hanna Kristmanson. Sculptress, ceramicist. (5 June 2010, Soho, New York City.) Ruth Abernathy, Adrienne Allison, Joe Fafard, John Hooper, Hal Ingberg, Bill Vazan: what defines the set of Canadian sculptors I’ve known? Thinking of my sculptor aunt Hanna I focus on their patience before committing bronze, steel, glass, wood, clay or porcelain to a finished form.
Soft-spoken, observant, firm, Hanna was a ‘shapeshifter’ transforming earth into vessel, the formless into form; the matter/spirit relation secreting qualities that only sculptors and perhaps architects may approach.
At Soho’s Ameringer Mckenery today, the striking solid-coloured monolithic columns of Anne Truitt. Of Barnett Newman’s indigo painting ‘Onement VI’, she wrote: ‘Such openness wiped out with one swoop all my puny ideas. I staggered out into the street, intoxicated with freedom, lifted into a realm I did not dream could be caught into existence.’
... (Vancouver, Christmas 2008.) Up early to Horseshoe Bay for the Sechelt ferry. Sun bursting through clouds, exhilarating views of snow-topped Rockies through rear windows on the Queen of Surrey.
A fine family Christmas at Lawrence and Hanna’s multi-level house-art studio on the hillside at Roberts Creek. Cousin Kathy prepared the turkey, helped by sister Lynn just arrived with her family from St. John’s.
During a lively exchange Uncle Lawrence feels faint and has to sit. Surely it wasn’t my reference to Jimmy Pattison! No, no. It turns out my uncle has eaten nothing yet today. Every year we’ve come it’s been child’s-Christmas-in-Wales; zany, positive.
Hanna, delighted with the artwork we’ve conveyed from her grandson Eric in Ottawa, is worrisomely hazy about recent events, the previous hour hard to recall. In previous visits we’ve discussed the family of black bears living in the surrounding woods. Once, descending their acreage towards the seashore Léa and I encountered a mound of steaming droppings, the bruin still rustling nearby. Uncannily, it was Hanna who emerged from the brush to greet us.
Today, she’s distracted. Their neighbour has gone and shot one of the bears. The usual scramble to catch the last ferry. Goodbyes cut short. A gift. One of Hanna’s fish-themed platters. A most enjoyable day.
Morten Schmidt. Architect. (26 January 2017, Ottawa.) Earlier this week, on Monday, I introduced the Danish architect Morten Schmidt to 500 people at a joint NCC Urbanism Lab/Carleton University lecture at the Canadian Museum of History. His splendid new Halifax Public Library has constructive lessons for the proposed Ottawa library that is controversial right now. That library’s board attended in numbers.
Morten hosted afterwards at a restaurant on Sussex Dr. along with Carleton professors. I asked Bruce Cuwabara to join us. Seated next to Morten, we conversed about Iceland, architectural lighting, Olafur Eliasson, James Turrell, Mark Rothko, and angels.
I told him of my recent Christmas dream. It was our old apartment in the Roper House by the cathedral, its high walls, large paintings, the formal hallway; Kyrie, along with Grandma Kristmanson and her Icelandic mother, levitating up near the ceiling, looking down. The calm, the immense feeling of well-being.
He described his own such dream: looking into a dark sky and seeing the constellations move as if they were live animals, again with this feeling of well-being. He’s a Quaker, like Turrell, and leaning in he said quietly that there is a guardian angel, but also a second angel, whose role in one’s life is less precise. In his dark clothes, lean build and silver hair, it felt like Wenders’ Wings of Desire, the angel whispering softly in my ear.
The Slow Loris found its home and gave its name to the Camp of the Slow Loris at East Grand Lake where various Kristmansons have gamboled. I am enjoying these--have just read several that I have missed.