I have just taken 3 sculptures with their poems to the Gore Bay Museum on Manitoulin Island where they will be part of the Cross-pollination 2 project with partner Kate Thompson’s wall collage and poem. 25 artist/writer pairs riffing on the artifact of their choice from the museum. Ours is Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound and we have had a great time with the hidden-ness of women’s lives then, and now, revealed in one small, flowery advertising card: a product made by a woman for women at a time when women’s bodies were a taboo subject. Google the project and learn all about it! Come to the opening at the museum on October 15 and tell me all about it. I can’t make the trip back here -just too much going on in the city and a long way to come for a week-end.
Elisha Sidler of the Debajamajig Theatre Group was here for a last visit taking photographs of the dock at my rented cottage. They will form a wall collage -along with my oldest bathing suit on a hook, my Oakes Cottages peaked cap and my walking stick-and the prose piece I wrote for the 6 foot by 6 foot project she is organizing. My piece is: The Dock at #9 Oakes Cottages on Lake Mindemoya. Another opening in October I won’t be here for.
It has been a wonderful summer of readings, book signings, interesting projects and the great people I meet. I don’t think too many people “down south” realize that Manitoulin island is a hot bed of creativity year round. I feel lucky to be a summer resident participant. Back to packing up now.