November Art Exhibition

I always get excited when it’s time to have a public exhibition of my artwork. For the last several years I have built a comfortable relationship with many of London’s libraries for this purpose. I like exhibiting in public libraries because they don’t charge any display fees, as many art galleries do. I have found that only a select cross-section of any community attends exhibitions in galleries, while library exhibitions attract people from the entire community.

I’m even more excited about this art exhibition because I will be able to showcase many artworks that have been created during my ‘Art For Earth’ workshops. This exhibition has displayed: ‘Earth and Sun’ painted by the grade 4/5 class of Victoria School, ‘Temagami Pine’ (finished just a few days ago) by the grade 2B class of Matthews Hall Independent School and the first two paintings in a series of four that have been created by the senior students from the Montessori House of Children. I was glad that there was a little bit of room left for me to display one or two of my own creations!

Since poetry is a very important form of art creation, I always showcase a few of my writings at my exhibitions, as well. Here is one of the poems that will be on display:

Freefall

Although we have poisoned our skies
And tainted our soils
Cut down all our timbers
And reaped (from war) its spoils
A vision still captivates my mind
Of a future to behold
Filled with all the spirits
Not bending under the weight
Of such a heavy load

We will know no hate
We will reflex with gentle hand
We will shine with the peace
That has finally swept over all lands

Of course, there are the rising tides
That will spread disease near and far
But with a blink of history
This suffering will pass
Leaving only a subtle scar

We will adapt and evolve as we always have
And (this time) we will learn from our mistakes
But first we must survive this freefall
Having been tossed from our car
‘Cuz we were too afraid to use the brakes

March, 2003

This exhibition will be open to the public for the month of November. You will find this display on the third floor of the Central Library – located in the Galleria Mall – downtown London. Enjoy!!!

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In less than two weeks time I will have my first peace of artwork in a country half way around the world. Through the years, I have seen my artworks travel as far away a New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany, and India – to name just a few countries. Now, I will soon be able to say that I have a peace of my artwork in China.

A little over a week ago, I had a fun contest on my facebook website. I had asked my friends to share with me “one thing that you did today to bring peace to this world”. I was delighted with all the different responses and surprised by the number of people that participated. I decided to ‘gift’ an art print to one participant. This was a lot of fun for everyone and I’m sure that I’ll be doing it again.

My friend in China will be very surprised. She is already very happy because she is getting one of my art prints, but imagine her surprise when she opens the package to find a collection of my ‘peace stik-ers’ and a special animation film recorded onto a DVD.

The entire story about this event can be found at: http://bitsandpeaces08.blogspot.com/2008/10/connecting-with-world.html

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Coming up this week: My second art workshop at Victoria Public School will be keeping me busy for the next three days. Class #2 of 3 at the Montessori School will be on Thursday afternoon. Since I don’t have a class scheduled for the following week I might actually get a few days to relax.

Be artful in your peacefulness

Jim