Everyday Treasures

“The artist must be obedient to the work...  Each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius or something very small, comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am.  Enflesh me.  Give birth to me.’  And the artist either says, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,’ and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses.”

- Madeline L’Engel

This summer, I went through a workbook entitled “The Creative Call:  An Artist’s Response to the Way of the Spirit.”  It challenged me to see the making of art as a holy calling - to attend to the work of writing an article or crafting a photograph or preparing a lavish meal with the same zeal and sense of purpose as the craftsmen who were “filled with the Spirit” to produce articles of gold and stonework and beautifully designed curtains and carvings for the tabernacle.  It pushed me to recognize the lies and the distractions that suck the creative life out of me and keep me from rising up and stewarding the creative gifts I’ve been given.  And it spoke to me of connecting with the Creator Himself and allowing Him to inspire me and live His life through me as I bring to form the things I see in my mind’s eye.

During the course of my season of going through this book (which I highly recommend, by the way) I had the chance to get glimpses into the creative lives of two artists who are also good friends of mine:  Mike, who is a painter, and Brooke, who is a potter.  My time with each of them sparked a whole host of things in my heart as I watched them pursue their individual crafts.  Both are courageously prioritizing their art in the midst of busy work and family lives.  Both came alive as they talked of their current projects - the ones they’ve been commissioned to do as well as the ones they are working on for the pure joy of putting brush to canvas and fingers to clay.  And both spoke of that incomparable feeling of co-operating with their Creator as He created something beautiful through them.  With them.  In them.

Mike is my best friend’s husband, and I’ve loved seeing the way his talent adds colour to his world, be it purposeful paint “splatters” on the tablecloths at their wedding or the fantastic sketches he’s done of their baby girl.   I’ve seen plenty of his professional airbrush work (it used to form a border three canvases deep around their living room...) and have watched his eyes light up as he flips through pictures on his phone of sculptures and murals he’s been doing for water parks and climbing gyms.  (The guy can take you all the way to the bottom of a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee explaining the nuances of shading and palette brush definition.  He’s passionate about his stuff!)  This summer, I got to see him in action at the Painters’ Circle in Stanley Park as well as at the Grand Prix of Art in Ladner and was amazed at the way he can bring a scene to life with a brush.  

Brooke and his wife Dana are friends from my days as a Tennesseean, and when I made the rounds down South this summer, I had the pleasure of sharing a meal with their family in their dining-room-cum-pottery-studio.  On Facebook during the previous months, I’d been watching their pottery business come back to life after a long hiatus, and it had stirred something in my heart.  Here was a man with six kids and a whole lot of work responsibilities making time and space in his life to do what he loved:  create.  Over supper, Brooke (and his faithful firer/glazer Dana) talked about their passion for making something out of nothing, and the communion they experience with their own Potter in the process.  They’re rearranging their lives to incorporate an art form that will be a source of income but also, and more importantly, a source of life.  They’ve got a workshop in the dining room and a kiln in the backyard and a “Gehman Pottery Works” sign out back to make it official.  And I respect them so much for it.

After the meal, Brooke sat there at the table and spun a lump of clay that soon took shape as a deep dish.  I watched him coax it from nothing into something, and then painstakingly add two tiny holes on one side and a little groove on the other -  a resting place for a pair of chopsticks.  The perfect noodle bowl.  And I marveled at this reflection of the One who dreamed up humans and then made us out of dirt.  That feeling of breathing life into something that, just an hour before, only existed in your imagination - an incomparable taste of what it means to partake of the Divine nature alive inside of us, to co-create with our Creator.

I bought a mug from the Gehmans that night, carefully selected from the dozens of earthen masterpieces on their dining room rack.  Brown and teal with the faintest streak of glitter.  I wanted to take home a piece of the magic, I guess.  To hold something in my hands that says, “Art is worth your time.  Don’t neglect the gifts within you.  Make space for them, take time for them, fight for them.”  To have something to remind me my creative pursuits - whether for profit or for play - are about so much more than making money or entertaining myself or even bringing joy to others.  They’re about connecting with the One in whom creativity itself originated.  

Check out these talented guys and their work online:

Mike the Painter:

Michael Moser Art

Moser Creative 

Brooke the Potter:

gehmanpottery.com

Gehman Pottery Works Etsy Shop

Chicken Caesar wraps and watermelon.  Families on picnic blankets and vendors plying the beach with thermoses full of tea and Nescafe.  Kids in water wings and a parasailer floating overhead.  The sun setting over the mountains.  A cool dip in the Mediterranean to wash away the 38 degree day.   

My friends had convinced me that, on my first day back in Turkey, the best cure for jetlag would be an evening trip to the beach.  They were right - the swim woke me up and the catch-up conversation kept me awake until my 9:00 goal.  But as I bobbed in the waves and let them tumble me against the pebbles, I couldn’t stop thinking about another beach - a beach 450 km away where just over a week ago a limp little body in a red t-shirt was tossed to shore by that same sea.

I knew that, in just a few hours, as soon as darkness fell, that same sea would be lapping against the sides of flimsy dinghies crammed with dozens of people willing to place their lives and those of their children in the hands of uncaring smugglers who would shove them from the shore into the merciless waves.  Their hopes for new lives free from war and terror would carry them to Greece, then up on to the Balkans where they would begin the long trek to Austria or Germany on foot...if their inflatable rafts made it across at all.

Three days before my return, my mom and I went to the memorial for Aylan, Galib and Rehanna Kurdi.  We wept with the boys’ aunt, their community, and a hundred or so strangers who, like us, couldn’t let these deaths go unmarked.  That same day, we cheered as the news showed Austrians handing refugees bags of water and food along the road and Germans welcoming migrants at the Munich train station with open arms.  And we rejoiced as, seemingly all at once, the world “woke up” to the refugee crisis and asked a collective, “What are we going to do about this?”

But an “awakened world” has not changed the number of boats departing the Turkish coast every hour.  Two days ago, the coast guard rescued 153 migrants from the sea, and yesterday another thirty-four drowned a few miles from our shore.  Among them, four babies, six boys, five girls.  Eleven little Aylans and Galibs.  A heartbreaking headline that has become all too commonplace.  

Tonight I was reading a piece by CNN’s Arwa Damon about how she connected with several refugees as she documented their journey through Hungary on their way to Germany.  And I couldn’t stop crying.  Migrants fleeing through cornfields as police chase them like criminals.  A grown man sleeping on a train’s luggage rack.  A mother saying she wished her family had been killed by ISIS instead of living out this slow, shameful death.  

This week I travelled halfway around the world in a mere 22 hours. I sat in a passably comfy seat that (except on my middle flight) tilted back when I wanted to sleep.  There was a TV loaded with dozens of movies and TV shows and a map that showed precisely how far until our destination.  Someone brought me a blanket when I was cold, food before I even had the chance to get hungry, and seconds of coffee if I wanted it.  The fact that my original itinerary was cancelled due to a pilots strike was no big deal - there was a free hotel room and meal vouchers to make sure I lived through the inconvenience in comfort.

Sure, I had to deal with jetlag.  The neighbours’ rooster did nothing to aid me in my plight.  On my first trip to the market, one side mirror fell off my bike because it had melted in the summer sun.  The grapevine has taken over my balcony and it may require the jaws of life to reclaim the chair it ate, meaning I can’t sit in my favourite spot just yet.  And some freak error with the phone company has rendered my cell temporarily useless.

But I had a home to come home to.  And a bed and a bike and a balcony and a phone.  I have a blender, an air conditioner, photo albums, a pillow, a box full of every letter and Christmas card I’ve received in the past nine years.  I was greeted with a welcome note from my roommate and food in the fridge from some thoughtful friends.  

My journey here didn’t involve a desperate flight from a terror-stricken country.  There was no panicked sea-crossing with an inner-tube for a life-preserver in case the boat sunk.  I didn’t have to walk for a good part of a 2000 km trek (Athens to Munich) that Google Maps says should take two hours and twenty minutes by plane, or nineteen hours and forty-four minutes by car.  There were no police dogs, no barbed wire fences, no hard train station floors.  No wondering whether my apartment building was still standing or if the rest of my family would make it out alive.

Instead, I got to end the trip sitting with my toes in the Mediterranean, thinking about how I have everything.  Everything except the one thing I’d give anything to have right now:  a way to stop people from having to cross that same sea.

When I was in Grade 6, Mrs. Bandstra wrote on my report card that I had “improved greatly in art class” because I now “drew people with necks.”  

Suffice it to say, drawing was never my forté.  Even now, my (mostly stick-figure) people, while they have evolved so far as to have not just necks but eyebrows and ears as well, still look like a seven-year-old drew them.  But “crafting” - making something with fun materials and my own two hands - now, that was much more up my alley.  

My favourite birthday gifts were always things like Gimp to make friendship bracelets, smelly felts, or puff paint and a t-shirt to decorate.  And the presents I gave were (and still are) pretty much always handmade.  On Christmas Eve, I was forever putting up my “Santa’s workshop” sign and disappearing into my room to make “just one more gift.”  Those little plaster ornaments from Dundee Hobby Craft - shaped like Santa or a dog in a stocking and covered with glitter paint - made the rounds several years in a row.  And I distinctly recall a last-minute yogurt container lid decorated with a Plasticine face that I was sure Mom would absolutely love.  (She did, of course.  Knowing her, it’s still in storage somewhere...)   My cousins and I would look forward all summer to the week we’d spend at Auntie Robin’s house playing Monopoly and “getting crafty.”  This always involved some sort of creation that ended up in the oven - Fimo and Friendly Plastics jewelry or Shrinkydink keychains.  And then, when I was a bit older, my favourite part of babysitting was the fact that it was an excuse to get into the Play-Doh and crayons.  

In high school, most of my creative energy was expressed through writing.  In Grade 9, Mr. Wiebe had us make poetry books - binders filled with our own original work.  Even though I hit the minimum requirement, I just kept on writing - churning out page after page of “inspired rhyme”, right up until the day before I needed to turn it in.  In Grade 10, the “journalling” portion of Humanities class was a happy excuse to keep up on my diary.  (Bless Mrs. Semke for letting us write “Do not read” at the top of any page we wanted to keep private, or she would’ve had a backstage pass to all the class drama...)  And then there was the development of my writing talent that came in the form of doodled-on notes passed back and forth between friends under the clever (and, I’m sure, undetected) guise of “borrowing a calculator.”  (We got so good at folding notes so tightly that we could even fit one inside the empty barrel of a ballpoint pen!)

In high school, my best friend and I talked about how fun it would be to start a greeting card company.  She’d do the artwork (for obvious, neckless reasons) and I’d come up with the words. While we never actually launched this dream together, I did get to see it fulfilled myself a few years later.

It started when I discovered there was a market for thank you cards amongst the expats at my language school in Guadalajara, Mexico back in 2001.  My tools were a grand total of two ink pads in shades of blue and a box full of stamps.  The cards mostly involved a stamped pattern around the edges (or sometimes a painstakingly doodles flower border) and a carefully written out quote or verse in the centre.  Each one took a good half hour to make, and I think I sold them for a dollar.

I wanted to feel professional, so I came up with my own logo - a coffee cup and the name “Cafecito” - Spanish for “a little cup of coffee” - and I etched this on the back of each card by hand.  Later, I got a rubber stamp made of my logo so I could save time in branding them - way less hand cramps and way more consistent results that way!  The next development in my little business was the acquisition of an “embossing tool” - a blowdryer-ish thing that melted fine glitter powder spread over stamped ink to give it a raised look and some shine.  (Friends were always volunteering to help me “make cards” purely for the power-rush of using that thing!)

Shortly before I went to photo school in 2006, I heard a teaching on “What do you have in your hand?”  The story of David and Goliath and the idea that my camera was the “five smooth stones” I had in my slingshot with which to slay the giant led me to change my brand from Cafecito to Five Smooth Stones.  And when I made the move to Turkey, I also made the switch from stamped cards to photo ones.  This may have been partially motivated by the fact that stamps are heavy and we no longer get 70 pound luggage allowances, but I think it also had a lot to do with the fact that I had grown up.  Stamps and doodles felt young and amateur.  I was launching a photo business and there wasn’t really room for glitter powder and that embossing-blowdryer - in my suitcase or my portfolio.  

Lest you think I’d abandoned the “handmade process” altogether, here’s a glimpse into the process of the original Five Smooth Stones photo cards.  I learned the Turkish for “I’d like 10 prints of this, please” and found myself a trustworthy photo shop in Istanbul.  I’d print pictures and then cut off a centimetre-wide strip from the edge so it would fit on the paper I had.  Then I’d take a piece of black cardstock and fold it in half, lick the crease back and forth, run my thumbnail along the crease to really make the cut clean, and then tear the paper in half.   (I could still do this motion in my sleep...)  Folded in half again, that would make the bases for two cards.  The same process would be repeated with a piece of cream-coloured cardstock, except I’d tear it into quarters and those would be for the inserts.  I’d use a gluestick (and later, when I was really in the big leagues, double-sided tape) to affix the cream insert into the black card and then use black photo corners to stick the photo to the front.  And voila, a card!  

Oh, except for the label on the back.  That came from a sheet of sticker paper with my “Five Smooth Stones” label on it and my contact info.  I had to cut along the lines and then pry that stubborn sticker off by trying to slide my fingernail under the corner to get it to release.  (What a blessed day it was when I discovered the wonder of Avery address labels!)  My incredibly self-sacrificing roommates would chip in when I had a big order and help me with the tearing and sticking - though I did all the photo trimming myself cuz I was kinda anal about that.  :)  We’d sit and watch episodes of Everwood or Avrupa Yakası and tear and stick til our tongues and fingernails had turned black and we had papercuts under our thumbnails and a pile of the torn edges and photo corner backs lying in the middle of the floor.

Those were the days.

It was right around that time that I discovered the wonderful world of Shutterfly and moved my cards from handmade-ish to professionally printed.  The ease of it was amazing - just upload and order!  No tearing, cutting, peeling or sticking.  (Except for the label on the back.)  Soon after that, I started selling cards online through my Etsy site.  I can still remember the thrill the first time someone favourited one of my products...and then how exciting it was to have people I’d never met ordering my stuff!  I moved into doing calendars and photo coasters, and eventually started paying extra to have Shutterfly print my own logo (instead of theirs) on the back of my cards.  I was the real deal now!

The cards look so crisp and professional - no rough edges, no crooked labels, no inserts falling out when the Mediterranean heat melts the glue and renders it useless.  But honestly, as proud as I am to be selling great looking products that people love, sometimes I really miss the good ol’ days of tearing paper and trying to cut the photos straight.  I loved the fact that I was involved in every bit of making that card, save for the actual developing of the photo.  (I didn’t inherit my dad’s darkroom, unfortunately...)  I got to feel the paper in my hands and really interact with it like a piece of art.  There’s a pleasure in working with my hands that just can’t be replaced by the satisfaction of a professionally produced product.  (See, Mr. Wiebe?  I haven’t lost my knack for alliteration!)  And while I know it’s a smart business practice to think like a consumer and make images I know people would buy on a card, it’s way more fun to just shoot what I like and then consider it a bonus if someone buys it. I love to make things I’m proud of, not just things that sell.

Even though I love my photo cards, the ones I really adore are the ones I made with my own two hands - the patterned paper coffee cups and making sticker-lettered Christmas cards.  The ones that I didn’t just “find and shoot” but actually “imagined and made.”  I come alive when I am able to get hands-on in my creative pursuits - making placecards for Thanksgiving dinners, decorating personalized gift bags, doing crafts for friends’ weddings or making my own wrapping paper.  

And every once in awhile, when my brain is cluttered with “adult responsibilities” or my creative juices are, well, constipated, or I have a day off and just need some “creative release”, the very best thing for me - the thing that makes me feel alive and happy - is to pull out all my pretty papers and cut and tear and paste and make a piece of artwork - maybe a card, or maybe something useless just for fun, just for me.  It takes me back to the days when art was play - for pleasure and nothing else.  When finger painting was “a good use of my time” and jewelry no one would ever wear was a magnificent work of art simply because I made it.  

All that to say... it’s fun to see the way I’ve “matured” in my creative pursuits.  It’s such a rare privilege to be able to make a business out of something you’re passionate about, and the fact that I’ve been able to make some extra money by creating things that bring beauty into others’ lives makes me super happy.  But I hope I never lose the “childlike” side of creating - the side connected to torn paper and photo corners and my imaginary friend Boovoofoo and the cotton ball Santa Claus Mom hangs on the cabinet door every Christmas.  

May we never be too old for crayons.

A friend and I have a longstanding habit of texting each other amusing last names we come across when we’re out and about.  

Last names in Turkey are a fairly recent affair - after the founding of the Republic in 1923, Atatürk declared that everyone must choose one by a specified date.  So “Mehmet who lives behind the mosque” might have become Mehmet Yılmaz (Yılmaz means “Doesn’t Fear”) or Mehmet Şimşek (Şimşek means “Lightning.”)  Many people’s names reflected their occupation, like Kahveci (“The Coffee Seller”) or that of their father, like Yağcıoğlu (“Son of the Guy Who Sells Oil.”)  Others, like that of our Prime Minister, Davutoğlu, are the Turkish equivalent of “Johnson” or “Anderson.”  (His means “Son of David.”)  Still others chose names that reflected a characteristic for which they wanted to be known, such as Eşsiz (“Without Equal”) or Altınyürek (“Heart of Gold”).

Then there are the ones that sound a little...odd.  The ones that make you wonder if someone’s ancestor actually chose that name for himself or if he was out of town when they came by to register names and his neighbour decided to play a joke on him.   Those are the textworthy ones.  Some of our funnier finds are Parmaksız (“Fingerless”), Kocabıyıkoğlu (“Son of the One With the Big Moustache”) and - this one is my doctor’s name - Özkarakaş, which means “Essence of the Dark Eyebrow.”

Rambling through Istanbul’s older neighbourhoods is a great way to discover some good last names.  Many of the old apartment buildings were originally inhabited by a single family, with mom and dad on one floor and, as they got married, various kids and grandkids on the others.  Buildings were generally named after the family that owned them, or sometimes the city they originally came from.  I love the fun “fonts” of the various hand-painted signs over the entryways, and have decided to start a collection of my favourite finds.  Goodness knows it won’t be long before they’re torn down and replaced with thirty-storey “office-residence” buildings and shopping malls.  Gotta capture them before they’re gone, and a whole era of İstanbullu life with them.

This set are from the Moda and Yeldeğirmeni neighbourhoods in Kadıköy on İstanbul’s Asian side.  Note the evil eye on the first one and the stickers for water company subscription numbers and a locksmith's phone number so helpfully plastered on a few of the doors!  

Last week, Shutterfly had a sale.  The big kind, with 50% off your whole order and free shipping to Canada.  The kind that lets me actually make a decent profit from my photo card sales...or at least make up what I’m losing on all the stock sitting in shoeboxes in my mom’s living room drawers.  

These trips home for the summer are my big chance to shoot the kind of “North American market friendly” images that make for cards people will actually buy from my website.  (Not everyone on this side of the ocean thinks Turkish carpets and Roman  ruins are perfect on the front of a thank you note.)  It was my big chance to refresh my stock at a great price.  

The only trouble was, my creative flow was feeling a little...constipated.  I had zero inspiration, no fresh ideas.  Just a looming “end of the sale” deadline and one big blank absence of creativity.  

Thankfully, I’ve learned something over the years:  whenever I’m feeling “stopped up” or uninspired, the best thing I can do is get out there and do the very thing I have no vision for.  If I can’t think of anything to write, the fix is to sit down with my notebook and just start moving my pen.  If my Turkish is sounding pitiful or my grace for the culture is waning, the way to get out of my funk is to go join a bunch of neighbour ladies for tea and conversation.  And if I have a dearth of desire to make pretty pictures, the cure is to pick up my camera and walk out the door.

So that’s exactly what I did.  I had no ideas in my head, so I went out and let the ideas find me.

Steveston, the old fishing village turned quaint coastal neighbourhood just down the road from me, is always good for an infusion of life into my heart and my creative reservoir.  And this time was no exception.  Poking around the second hand stores and gift shops and looking at the work of other local artists always get the inspiration flowing.  A trip to Village Books gets my imagination whirring.  Wandering the familiar grounds of London Farm and the Britannia Shipyards yields surprises in places I thought I knew by heart.  A few minutes of salty air and driftwood and seagulls on the Dyke revives my heart.  And an artistically crafted latte at Rococino and a couple of those wonderful mini-donuts make up for anything that is still lacking.  

I came home at the end of the day feeling alive and unstuck.  Seeing beauty around me seems to deposit beauty into my own heart, and suddenly the ideas were flowing.  Two days later, I had churned out a number of images that I both love and am excited to sell.   (Sneak peeks of those to be posted soon!)

Sometimes all it takes is being willing to walk out the front door.  

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Here are some of my favourite images from the day: