Polar Bears Found at Small Arms, Doors Open Mississauga

This Saturday, September 28, from 10 am - 4 pm, my portraits and polar bear oil paintings will be for show and sale at the Small Arms Inspection Building,  as part of Doors Open Mississauga 2013. The Small Arms Building is near and dear to my heart. Why?

The Small Arms Building is a 144,000 sq.ft example of WWII  industrial architecture. During the war,  over 40,000  women, "Rosie the Riveters", came from all over Canada to work at this site, where they manufactured  about 1 million Lee-Enfield rifles.

The Lakeview Legacy Foundation, of which I was proudly a founding member,  has set out to repurpose this impressive, but empty building into a desperately needed arts centre of working artists studios, performance space, art galleries, and museum. In other words, arms to arts. (Read more about it here)

And, to help you envision just how dynamic this centre will be when it houses studios for working visual artists, (and musicians, actors, dancers,  filmmakers, creative scientists, etc.) over 20 artists (including me)  will each set up shop in an office. We'll show our craft as if a working day in our studios, and offer work for sale.

But that's not all.

The Honorary Colonel Gerald Haddon will speak about J.A.D. McCurdy, the Canadian aviation pioneer.

Heather Brissenden will sing Hits of the Blitz from 10:00 to 14:00.

The Lorne Scots machine gun teams will compete through out the day.

The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion   will also be there.

You can see a Sherman tank.

And best of all, you will have the rare opportunity to meet some of the wonderful  Rosie the Riveters who actually worked at Small Arms.

http://www.smallarms.ca/SmallArms.html for contact info, schedule, & parking (it's free!). P.S. a very short walk west from Longbranch Go Station, Toronto.

Now, can you find the polar bear in the photos below?

Remembrance Day: It's Not Black & White. Red Poppies, Art & Stories

          The 24th Ottawa War Memorial 

 

On November 11, 2010, shortly before 11 a.m., I stood alone at the cenotaph near my countryside artist studio. Thousands of miles away, my first-born son  was stationed  in a FOB, i.e. a forward operating base in Afghanistan. He had been gone for months, and still had a couple of months yet to serve in his extended tour.

I have always observed Remembrance Day,  but never gave it deep thought. In school, I liked to draw poppies and was often the one chosen to recite "In Flanders Field" at assembly. I appreciated that my children's elementary schools put great effort into their Remembrance Day ceremonies, and sometimes I helped. But other than that?

Well, my age is showing. When I was born, in the dawn before internet and satellite tv, heck, colour tv would have been good, anecdotes about any war were ancient history to me.  You might as well have been talking about ancient Egyptians (except they were cooler).

When I was an older teenager, my mom  revealed to me, like a guilty secret, instead of the sad story it was, that she had been married before. Her husband, who she had adored, had been killed in WW2 and was buried somewhere in France.  Even though this was obviously a pivotal event in my mother's life, my teenage brain saw this as a tragic, romantic tale of love, not a story about war.  Still, my mom was old , and  this was all before my time, so even that  story got filed right along those of my WW1 & WW2 veteran family members.

But oh, what a difference  30 years and a truckload of hindsight makes.

My children are now at the age that my grandparents, parents, and their siblings were when they had their wartime experiences.   I can better imagine my predecessors as young people, now that I have a houseful of them myself. Much easier now to imagine them enlisting for idealistic adventure.  Much sadder to imagine the danger,  loneliness, sorrow, exhaustion, terror, and trauma they faced thousands of miles from home.

Now the stories make more sense. Stories of  obedience, endurance and perseverance, and of camaraderie, compassion, and bravery. And if they were lucky to come home, and not all my family members were, they brought secrets, war wounds and, sometimes, a war bride.

Oh, WW1, WW2, Afghanistan.

That is what I thought of as I stood, now joined by a few others, at that cenotaph that day. I snapped a photo of the cenotaph with my phone,  e-mailed the pic to my son telling him I loved him with all my heart, and that the good folk at the cenotaph wished him well.

To my amazement, he answered me right back.

War is the blackest foolishness, but iPhones, black or white, are mighty handy in wartime.

If you would like to send a Christmas wish to those military still serving overseas, click http://www.sears.ca/custom-content/operation-wish?extid=050211_ca_Vanity_EN_Unknown_Operationwish

Demolition by Neglect. Beautiful Stephenville WW2 Buildings in Limbo.

Stephenville, Newfoundland  was home to a United States Air Force Base in World War II.  This was an enormous base, and the last stop before Europe. Although many of the hangers are now gone, there are still many buildings from this period remaining. Barracks and other buildings that housed soldiers are now transformed into lovely apartments and private homes. Creative uses have been found for some of the hangers that exist, but some, like in the photo above, are vacant and in limbo, awaiting the next entrepreneurial endeavor. I imagine there are a few people in town who would like to see these vacant shells torn down. I hope they remain up. I would love to see  a creative use for these  beautiful giants with the dramatic auras.

I spent some time photographing the outside of some of these Stephenville WWII buildings. They compliment the photos I have been privileged to take of the interior of the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga, Ontario. During the second world war, over 40,000 women came from across Canada to work in the Lee Enfield Rifle plant there. The Lake View Legacy Project is committed to revitalizing this building as a creative centre with artist studios, theatres, exhibition space, brown field studies & more. Although it, too, sat in  limbo, creativity , co-operation & collaboration has resulted in a promising & positive future for this WWII space in Mississauga.

Big heART Ideas for Mississauga Small Arms Building

In the blog earlier today, I wrote about the thoughtful & inclusive process Mississauga has undergone to research the betterment of arts and culture in the city. The creation of venues for culture, heritage and education in Mississauga, has pretty well taken a back seat to 30 years of building houses, and attracting business. Pretty well complete, the city has outgrown its "bedroom community" moniker. More people are coming into Mississauga to work than leave, and guess what? A lot of artists want to work, learn, perform, teach, exhibit, sell, share, mentor, here too. But where?

Well, AIM, (Artists in Mississauga) and the Lakeview Ratepayers Association, may have the solution! Sitting on Lakeshore Blvd East, with Lake Ontario to its back is the 33,000 square foot Small Arms Inspection Office Building. This building has everything one could envision for a world level arts (all arts) centre.

The positives:

· It is ENORMOUS- solving city's desperately needed room for studios (visual art , dance, sound, & more), workshops, installations, cafe, galleries, heritage museum

· fabulous lighting everywhere - huge windows, skylights

· high ceilings (which do play a part in creativity - high ceilings, big ideas)

· Location, location, location. By the lake, Lakeshore Rd & Mississauga Transit, by Longbranch Go, by TTC streetcar, by Marie Curtis Park, by future parks and Lakeview's Heritage Plan

· Plenty of free parking space

· handy to plenty of walk by traffic - especially when those parks go in

· Large welding area- large garage doors - set to go as metal sculpture centre. Who else has one of those?

· Important potential for tourism, arts, culture, and citizen destination

· Important potential for artist to sell, work, interact, teach, exhibit, Stay in their city to create!

· Heritage: This building with its historical connections to World War 2, feminism, 40's architecture, & Mississauga development deserves to be saved, and used well. It embodies one of Mississauga's most exciting historical stories.

The Negatives? We're not in there..yet.