Sketches: part three

this post is the third in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

It seems appropriate to put this sketch next - after all, the subject matter is similar to the last one I posted. This is the kind of sketch that became most common in my own notebooks as I got older - not sketches of mountains, but sketches crossed out. Of course, in my own notebooks, I knew exactly why I was rejecting a certain drawing. Here, I can be less sure. Was it because some of the shading strayed outside the lines of the mountain peak? Was it because an isolated mountain was less appealing to the artist than the previous trio? Was it because there was not enough room above the mountain to imply the sky by drawing clouds? Or was it because the artist couldn't quite recall the mountains with their pencil? Was it because, however much the tourism bureau may wish to make Edmonton a "Gateway to the Rockies," it's really a "Long-way to the Rockies," and it's easy to forget what the mountains look like. Edmonton is a prairie city, surrounded by farmers' fields and flat. But that's not to imply that there isn't a degree of majesty to the prairies too. I recall a short story by Henry Kreisel that I read in high school: "The Broken Globe," set primarily on a farm outside of Edmonton. The way he describes the "flat" that surrounds our city is something that can only really be justly evoked by his own words:

There were moments of weariness and dullness. But the very monotony was impressive. There was a grandeur about it. It was monotony of a really monumental kind... I also began to understand why Nick Solchuk was always longing for more space and more air, especially when we moved into the prairies, and the land became flatter until there seemed nothing, neither hill nor tree nor bush, to disturb the vast unbroken flow of land until in the far distance a thin, blue line marked the point where the prairie merged into the sky. Yet all over there was a strange tranquility, all motion seemed suspended, and only the sun moved steadily, imperturbably West, dropping finally over the rim of the horizon, a blazing red ball, but leaving a superb evening light lying over the land still.

Why is this not the picture of Edmonton (or at least the surrounding area) that tourism agencies promote?

One of the characters in "The Broken Globe" is a farmer who still believes that the sun revolves around the earth, and that the earth is flat. The protagonist, a learned man from the city, is baffled by this view, until he sees it for himself. This is the moment when the power of the prairies really sinks in - as the two stand on the land, looking out:

His eyes surveyed the vast expanse of sky and land, stretching far into the distance, reddish clouds in the sky and blue shadows on the land. With a gesture of great dignity and power he lifted his arm and stood pointing into the distance, at the flat land and the low-hanging sky. ‘Look,’ he said, very slowly and very quietly, ‘she is flat, and she stands still.’

Sketches: part two

this post is the second in a series of responses to a child's notebook found at the Edmonton Reuse Centre

My favourite part about this picture is that the clouds look just like the snow caps on the mountains, but flipped upside-down. I can imagine the picture beginning itself again, in reflection. The bodies of the mountains would extend upwards from what we now see as clouds, and perhaps a third cloud might be added, a darker, stormy one, which, upside-down, would be a mountain as well, the opposite odd-one-out to the white-capped mountain already pictured on the right hand side. It can be surprisingly freeing to disorient yourself - once you get beyond the initial fear that comes with being upside-down or in a foreign place, a more playful sense sets in. I'm thinking of the month I spent learning handstands in a modern dance class, kicking upward in small increments, with a wall at my back to stop me, and then later, vaulting up into a handstand in the middle of the room, and reveling in the dizzying disorientation. When my feet touched the floor again, I had no idea what I'd looked like in the air - maybe I didn't reach a handstand at all, maybe I only manageda 45 degree angle from the floor. But it's that feeling of disorientation that's more important to me - the same dizzying freedom that I find when I travel, after I've made all necessary precautions against pickpockets, when I walk down a street just staring at everything all at once. Is there a way to achieve that same dizzying disorientation, and the freedom that comes with it, in a city that you know so well as your home? Walking around the city on your hands might be one method - it could certainly furnish a change of perspective - but despite my practice at handstands, a city tour of that type is not within my capabilities. I find something similar when I walk with my camera though. Fitting the sights I know well into frames I haven't yet composed forces me to reorient, if not disorient, myself. 

What do you do to achieve the freedom of disorientation at home?

re: Sketches: part one

Artist and friend Maren Elliott wrote to me in response to my last post, and has graciously allowed me to publish her words here. 


Here's the image that she's talking about, which appeared in the original post:

Children are taught from a young age to hold crayons and pencils and recreate symbols that we tell them mean different things. In a way, these iconic North American children's drawings are like our notation

system- they are cultural. If you showed another child from a completely different place/time/culture these tulips they may not have even been able to identify what they are 'supposed' to represent.

Imagine a Blackfoot child from the 1500’s who would have perhaps known the same riverbanks as this mysterious artist. Would they have known what those shapes on sticks represented? If they saw the typical arrangement of a triangle-on-square that since childhood I have associated with the idea of home, what would they have seen?

We can only speculate. Perhaps both children, despite their different lives, watched the sun paint the sky as it sank into the melting North Saskatchewan River with the same expression of wondered delight on their faces.

by Maren Elliott