Notes by John Walter on video of 'Ink Ocean' poetry performance

direct link: http://youtu.be/w4Xs2dIt2m4

Honoured, I share notes my dear friend John Walter (poet, playwright, novelist, teacher, intellectual, polymath) wrote while watching me perform Ink Ocean (as recorded in this video clip):

"Where plumes drag through the ocean's gloom" "Salt water on fire!" This poem is a wakeup call if I've ever heard one.  "Burning despair of illusion"--waw. Your response to the black ocean with words is powerful and moves from despair to love, Brenda. Your performance of Ink Ocean is powerful and rhetorically dramatic. It was so great to see you in front of a live audience.
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You get across the massive destruction, the complete wiping out of the entire environment, with the voice of a jeremiad poet who does not let herself lose herself in woe.
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I like the image of being 'fishermen of words' , the way you blend the ocean of ink and the blackened ocean, contaminated by the oil spill.
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"Let cold salt water wash our eyes until we swim in vision." So many great lines in this poem. I felt I was right there, in front of you, watching you perform.
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Your theatricality is impressive. Your voice is a skillful instrument. You demonstrate your ire and sadness and yet do not succumb to it.
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I like the way you undulate, 'anchored in the swell." The panoply of images you present is stark, and yet vast.
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Great finish. So gladdening to see you get such enthusiastic applause.

(Dec 3, 2012)


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'Fight Club' at the Keyhole Sessions

Because I like to keep a record, and also to show you, I've uploaded my untouched drawings from The Keyhole Session last night, the last life-drawing session of its kind ever.

They're all charcoal drawings, some with watercolour crayons, some with Cretacolor Aquarelle oil pastels. The first eight are approximately 15" x 11" and on 130lb archival art paper; the last is 16" x 12" and on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

The theme was The Fight Club and there were about 20 models arrayed around the room. The Madame's sense of performance, dramatic poses and grand spectacle shone spectacularly in the spacious Mod Club in Toronto.

Below, there was still time after drawing the first image, so I began on the 2nd, for which I had only a minute or two left - it's much more gestural. Except for that one, they are 15 minute sketches, with the final group one being 45 minutes.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with my work last night. My artist friends, Jen Hosein and Jacques Albert, also came and the camaraderie was nice.

Sonia Barnett, the mastermind and Madame behind these sessions, took the photo below and posted it on Facebook while the session was in-progress. You can see me bottom centre, and the model directly in front of me is who the first drawing posted above is of. It was quite an event, as you can see from this terrific photograph.

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A few late night snaps from the very last Keyhole Session

drawings photographed the next morning in bright sun for correct colour and white balance and posted in the next post
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Paper Lanterns and the Women Who Are One Woman

Last Keyhole life-drawing session tonight - though I do hope she continues the Nuit Blanche extravaganzas. This charcoal and coloured conte crayon sketch from the last session, Nov 13th, three 1 minute poses on the same page. 17" x 14", archival paper. I do have to run over to the art store to get a pad of primed cotton canvas sheets. Twenty models tonight, it's going to be a blow-out.

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What makes one tremble? On the privacy of the creative process.

Many years ago I attempted a little plein air; my then husband and I drove to parks outside the city and I set up my easel and painted for upwards of six hours. It was rather fun, except for the people who would walk over and look at my work and make comments that made me cringe - people who aren't visual artists often don't seem to understand that an artist isn't composing a photograph of the scene in paint. I've always been a very private painter and writer. I don't even like my children around when I'm working. After a few tries, I gave up plein air. Painting and writing are secret acts of the soul.

An art class, or being in a group where a couple of people are drawing (like the contingent of artists at poetry readings here in Toronto), is okay - these on-site sketches are rough notes that can be completed in the privacy of the home.

Last Thursday a friend of mine was posing at the Art Gallery of Ontario - the AGO does this every month, and he's been asked to pose for 3 months now. I was determined, really determined. It makes a difference to him to have a friend come, and I understand this.

My bag full of my favourite supplies, good paper, compressed charcoal, Cretacolor oil pastels, I trudged from the streetcar stop up to the Gallery, but swerved, and stopped a snack. And then I sat in a food court across the street for an hour. An hour! I had some delicious spring rolls from a Vietnamese take-out. I couldn't bring myself to go in to the gallery. Another friend who had gone last month said thousands of people walk by and look at your drawing and make comments like you're not even sitting there. She said wear ear buds, listen to music, ignore them. Yet I just couldn't go in. The trembling was greater than. So I sent my friend who was bravely posing a text and a photo of the Vietnamese take-out with apologies. He was really touched I had made it that far and tried for an hour to make myself cross the street and join in with the crowds.

Maybe another time.


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The Lady and Her Skeleton

A little explosion of ink and pastel at 3am before an early day. Probably shouldn't have. (Before me is a small plastic skeleton, and so I am actually drawing a figure, that skeleton 'fleshed out,' dimly reminiscent of a Kokoschka style (maybe)).

While I was photographing the oil pastel and India ink sketch, I heard my 6lb kitten going for a box with dog treats, over and over, and then one fell to the ground and eventually I went into the kitchen to see. Sure enough, she had a 'dental-type' dog treat on the floor, in splinters, and was nibbling on some small bits. No wonder doggie isn't barking as much when I go out, and has, according to the Vet, put on weight. Lol. They are in cahoots, have become a team!!!



I just took a pic of the figure I drew/painted in the early hours of today (3am-ish) and her skeleton, who clearly is gonna morph into more enfleshed beings in drawings and paintings, I can feel it. Lol!

Hope it shows in this photo - she's inclined at the same angle as the skeleton who inspired her. Those are candles in front of his right leg, I should have moved them.

And I must arrange him differently from time to time; obviously, him standing there like that affects my vision. Last night it was time to give him a body. Listen to me! Due to the bad influence of my children, I now am hooked on vampire and zombie shows, and it's beginning to show isn't it? :)) ::laughing:: 



'The Lady and Her Skeleton,' 2012, 15" x 11", charcoal, Cretacolor water-soluble oil pastels, India ink on Pentalic archival 25% cotton 130lb paper. (A gorgeous pale cream paper, percentage of sale donated to the American Wildlife Foundation.)

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'Ink Ocean' performed live at HOWL@QSpace

Ink Ocean: http://youtu.be/w4Xs2dIt2m4

On Nov 25, 2012, I performed my prose poem 'Ink Ocean,' on the Gulf Oil Spill, as one of the featured poets at Nik Beat's HOWL@QSpace in Toronto. I had memorized the prose poem. The image of the ink drawing, from which the poem emerged, only appears in the still for the video (I've included an image at the end of this post for you). I'm actually quite happy with the performance itself - passionate, intense, and yet clear enunciation.

Ink Ocean is about the oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when nearly 5 million barrels, or 210 million gallons, of crude oil were spilled into the sea due to an explosion of an off-shore drilling rig. It remains the largest marine spill in the history of the petroleum industry.

Over 5 months, hydro-carbon eating bacteria devoured 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas in the Gulf, and then stopped. Despite the massive cleaning efforts by the oil industry and governments, and the efforts of the bacteria, as of 2012, 40% of the spill remains in the waters.

This prose poem began as writing in an ink drawing. It took 6 - 8 months to finish, and was revised in preparation for this reading.  It is an experimental poem structually. A poem of utterance, of cross-currents and paradoxes. It is composed of many voices, and perspective shifts.

There are two parts. The first is on the oil spill, and the second is about love in a world bordering on oblivion, a world that's half spirit. We are in the 6th Mass Extinction on the earth. This is the backdrop.

The poem starts out in the Gulf and moves with the Gulf Stream to the Atlantic Ocean where it becomes a love poem. Can we love in a world inviting extinction? Yes, of course we can, and must.

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With thanks to Nik Beat, Q Space and Luciano Iacobelli. It was a great evening.




Ink Ocean, 2010, 13" x 16", India ink on archival paper. My prose poem on the Gulf Oil Spill, Ink Ocean, emerged from this drawing. The poem was revised in 2012.

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