ARTS.

Have an idea for a story or review? Contact the editor at arts@theotherpress.ca

 

Family and holiday traditions are the best gift of all

local storytellers share

holiday memories
| Cheryl
= Minns
Arts Editor

arts@ theotherpress.ca

his holiday season, Metro

Vancouver encourages
residents to consider giving the
gift of an experience instead
of an item that’s soon to be
discarded. Attending a local
storytelling event like The Flame
is one of many options.

This year’s holiday edition
of The Flame featured writers,
journalists, performing artists,
and actors, all sharing their
funniest and most heartwarming
tales at the Shadbolt Centre
for the Arts in Burnaby on
November 6.

The stage was set for the
season with Christmas lights
and artificial trees decorating
the black backdrop, while the
storytellers sat in mismatched,
1970s-style end chairs on the
side of the stage as they waited
for their turn at the microphone.

Metro Vancouver sponsored
the event as part of the Create
Memories, Not Garbage
campaign. The performances
will air on the Shaw channel
throughout the month of
December.

Sometimes the best way
to spend the holidays is with
your family, according to writer
Jacques Lalonde’s story.

Christmas was a special
time of year for his family when
he and his brother would play
hockey with the neighbourhood
boys and his mom would get

Christmas dinner on credit from
a local store—the only store
willing to offer credit to a single
mother.

Lalonde’s dad left when
he was two and his mother
struggled to raise him, his
brother, and his two sisters on
her own. His mother compared
the family to Popsicle sticks and
gave each child one to break
before daring the children to
break five Popsicle sticks at the
same time.

“But you could be the
Incredible Hulk; you cannot
break five Popsicle sticks. She
said, ‘See? When we're alone,
we're easy to break. When we're
together, nothing can tear us
apart,’” he said sentimentally.

Grant Lawrence, a CBC
personality and author, also
had an emotional story about
a member of his family—their
three-year-old mutt, Pete—and
the time the dog accidentally ate
rat poison before Christmas.

Lawrence was a teenager at
the time and couldn't handle the
vets’ news that his dog would
die and, worse yet, that they
wanted to euthanize him that
day at the clinic.

“I begged my parents in the
lobby of that animal hospital,
‘Please! Just force the vets to
treat Pete!’ At great expense,
mind you, which my dad was
nervously eyeing. And again, I
just wouldn't let up. And finally,
my parents relented,” Lawrence
said, his eyes tearing up at the
memory.

“And day after day after
day that December, I went down
to that animal hospital and Pete
was laid out unconscious. [...]
Everyday, I would hug him and

stroke him and lift up his big
floppy ear and talk into his ear.”

Thanks to Lawrence
spending time with the beloved
pet, Pete made a miraculous
recovery and lived to be 15 years
old.

Having a holiday tradition
can be an experience in itself,
such as choosing to have a real
Christmas tree because artificial
just isn’t the same.

Actor Beverley Elliott,
known for playing Granny in
Once Upon a Time, shared her
uproarious experience of getting
a Christmas tree each year with
her daughter, Sally.

All the things that could go
wrong did, including the tree
putting a large gouge in her
dashboard as she stuffed it in
the car, tying it to the car roof
and then realizing she had tied
her door shut, and having the
tree die before the season was
over.

She eventually had enough
and was ready to give in.

“T drive to Canadian Tire.
And I walk through the aisle
of the 50 per cent off artificial
trees,” Elliott said before singing
a verse of “O Christmas Tree”
in her lovely voice. “I can’t
do it. I can’t buy a fake tree.

I get why my parents had a
47-piece, dissembled balsam in
a cardboard box in their attic for
20 years—had that thing up and
down in 18 minutes flat—but
that’s not me. I want a real tree.”

Elliott and her daughter
continue to battle with bringing
home a real noble fir as their
Christmas tradition.

This year, make a memory,
share an experience, and enjoy
the holidays.

 

Actor Beverley Elliott shares the drama of bringing home a real Christmas
tree at The Flames holiday special | Photo courtesy of Tav Rayne

Mixed media artist's work sends mixed messages

Amelia Douglas Art Gallery

welcomes Cynthia Minden

Aidan

Mouellic
Staff Writer

 

 

Cynta Minden is best
known for creating
intricately woven basket
figures, but with her latest
art on display at the Amelia
Douglas Art Gallery at the
New Westminster campus, it’s
clear that she’s changing her
means of expression.

The Vancouver Island
artist’s latest showing,

Reclamation, will be on display
from November 7 to December
20. The mixed media art pieces
on display are reflective of the
show’s title because Minden
uses reclaimed pieces of litter
and driftwood to create her
mounted collages.

The artist writes that the
pieces on display are meant
to provide “a framework for
thinking about the relationship
between art and ecology, and
observations about society,
what we value.”

Oftentimes artists seek
to explore deeper themes
within their art, but too often
the artist buries that meaning
behind layers of unnecessary

symbolism.

Minden’s art displays
pieces of found man-made
shoreline debris, which are
then paired with natural
debris. Displayed in the gallery
is a slice of West Coast beach.

This is all neat in theory,
but the outcome lacks
discerning characteristics and
appears pretentious when we
read into what the artist wants
the pieces to reflect.

In Minden’s statement
for the show, she asks, “How
do we rectify our enormous
impact on the ecosystem that
we share with a multitude of
other animals and plants?”

Yet when I looked at the

pieces in her latest collection,
I wasn’t asking myself that
question.

I get the sense that
sometimes artists feel the need
to construct elaborate motives
for their art, as if making
something just for the sake of
beauty is a sin.

Visual art is meant to
create emotion. It’s supposed
to make us feel. Minden’s
gallery showing only made
me wonder what happened
to the woman who used to
create such radical pieces.
Everyone knows that humans
are fracking up the world,
but an iron nail wrapped in
twine doesn’t exactly convey

the serious message very
effectively, in my opinion.

Though the new pieces are
not exactly pretty, they do have
rustic charm. They are for sale,
and if I had a seaside cabin, I
would love to have some of the
mixed media pieces on the wall
next to a hanging paddle or a
fishing rod.

For more information
about the artist, visit the
Amelia Douglas Gallery
or check out www.
cynthiaminden.com