DRAGAN ALKESIC

Made in a local cafe using coffee, hibiscus and paprika

Esther Tennenhouse's room

This room is about 18 x 14 feet. On my right on the long wall is a large window. I’ll get up and slide it open as it’s a sunny day. Now I’m back sitting at the head of our dining room TABLE which has been moved into the living room for a seder - a white table cloth (some spots now). It’s 6 feet long and 4 wide - comfortably expansive, a surface of possibilities and space. And  white light.

The dominating thing in this room is the WINDOW -11 ½ x 5 feet. This is a housing co-op, all dark brown but nevertheless this 11 x 5 picture I see is more than half green (year round green - this is the West Coast of Canada). The London Limes don’t all have leaves yet so one half of the rectangle is sky with some big firs above the roofs.

Right on the window are 24 inch wide 2 and 5 inch long vertical strips of paper (crests of the NWT) stuck to a circular area - about 4 sq ft. sq. In my head I call it Memorial to a Dead Flicker, because I came home one day and found a sort of woodpecker lying on the walk in front of the window and a tiny bit of something splattered on the window. And one bit of feather. I put the paper strips on the glass in the hope no one would again try to fly into the reflection of sky and trees.

Against the far wall in front of me (to the left) is a very unfancy upright  PIANO. You can read above the keyboard: Heintzman & Co. and below that, Toronto. She came to Vancouver via Yellowknife from a man whose aunt gave him piano lessons on her, in Ontario 70 years ago. Too much stuff on her top so I can’t easily check her birthdate - is she 100 yet? I should get out the vinegar, her ivories a bit yellow.

In the clutter on top of the piano: three elaborate EASTER EGGS with fine patterns, black red, ochre and white, one broken, standing in eggcups. A gift in Romania from the wife of an iconmaker/restorer. I left the broken one in its eggcup imagining that with extreme care and tweezers I can repair it. Beside them a single CHALICE, pale blue grey glaze, I got last summer from a potter who lives in the hills in S.E. Saskatchewan. Every year he has a wonderful musical gathering/sale in his shop, all his work out - hundreds of pieces and I looked at every one for a wedding gift for a friend's daughter and picked this cup. Seemed too lonely a thing for a wedding gift so it never got given. It sits and tells me that story every time I look at it. 

At the other end of the top of the piano is Punk Faun who is 21” tall - an afternoon slab exercise in working from a hollow cylinder. He has 4 horns rising 6” from top of head in parallel undulations, closed eyes, and a ring in his nose. Between Faun and eggs is Confusion: a lightbox with the cord and plug dangling out, and an expensive four square inches glazed flower tile from Turkey, turquoise, toasted orange and white. That, with some little boxes of unfinished stuff.

At the left corner beside the piano a violin case leans against the wall partly covering a  big framed enlargement (also propped against the wall) of an old photo of a family in front of a Model T car. Father, Mother holding baby, two other children - one a little boy in overalls with his thumb in his mouth, his father's hand large across his chest (little boys in overalls in family farm pictures always have one strap of their overalls fallen off their shoulder). This is in Manitoba, about 1946, still using real old cars. Because of the violin, all I see is boy’s head, thumb in mouth, his dad’s head and the car roof way above their heads.

To the right of the piano, at the corner near the window, is the TV - a black blindeye thing, a 22 inch screen, not the most modern, a PVR machine beside it. TV is on an old library table - light brown oak with some stiff grace to it (tapering legs, a bit of wood carving, ornate metal drawer pulls with hanging little oval rings). The TV sits askew across half of it, overhanging the edge. I’m always aware the shelf that supported by two curved pieces of wood is not there. I know the shelf has been lurking somewhere in the house for years but now I can’t find the curved part. I feel there’s uncontrolled disorder - of things past, yes, and things undone.

Between piano and TV are some heavy green plate GLASS SHELVES, the lowest of the 3 at the height of the top of piano and TV. Below them is a wide old oak office chair, with arms and high back of 1” slats. These shelves sit on those metal brackets that slot into vertical metal strips that are screwed onto the wall. I am told they should be taken down. They are lethal, especially as they are glass, because this is a zone waiting for The Big One, a big earthquake. We - piano, TV, big window, me and the rubble (of sorts) covering all the surfaces here are sitting on a huge fault. Tectonic plates due to shift over each other, rearranging the concrete pad this plasticated laminated, light wood, flooring sits on.

On the shelves are mostly clay things I’ve made - the smallest visible is a KILN GODDESS, only about 4 ½”  tall, something quickly made at a raku firing, to sit on the kiln. She is dancing (but has lost her fingers) and is the clay equivalent to a gesture drawing. Her pose perhaps looks a bit coy though was not meant to be. But she is amazingly alive so I’m fond of her.

Beside her, a GREENMAN face with leaves like the small leaved oaks along the lane by the park here - light brown clay, but lying down so you only see some of the leaves. Beside that, looking at me, the tiny black eye of a ivory (or maybe bone) SEAL bought in Iqaluit on a puppet troupe tour. This little seal swims an inch up from it’s rock base held up by little wooden peg, its flippers and tail are spread wide, stretched, and so quite delicate and thin. On that shelf is a white clay CONE, like a well sharpened pencil tip, standing on it’s base - one of six variously shaped cones on the shelves. The others pierced and slashed and impressed, one painted with reddish stain. I hold these over or up to the light and look at them from inside and outside. There's also a RAM’S HORN made into a shofar. It is not the small, single curve kind, it has a twist, but is not the huge long spiral kind either, just middlesized.

On the second shelf is a propped up WHITE PORCELAIN GREENMAN, a very free improvisation. You can see just his eyes and the stalks that are his eyebrows flowing into the happy finger squished leaves of his forehead. On this shelf there is also a photo of departed miniature shnauzer 'Trouble' (she wasn’t).

Next to the shelves, on the wall above the TV, is a linoprint about a foot square of a man (Eskimo) shooting at three flying ducks from the shore. The lake is a circle of blue with vertical white gouges to show waves. The interesting thing is that most of the turquoise lake lies upon a dark blue patch that has short horizontal white gouges and his empty boat is floating on it. So the lake is superimposed on the river (or ocean). The artist knew exactly what place this was and drew a hill in the upper left background.  He was very traditional and only just introduced to printmaking. Perhaps this is why the clouds in the white sky are blue, like the lake.

The SIDEBOARD to my left is centered on the wall facing the window. This wall is orange, done with a sponge, to match an invitation to the event in the enlarged photo above the sideboard: 15 people dancing, three musicians behind them. Under it, a power bar, a bit of an octopus with 5 cords plugged in. It’s old, from Quebec, with lovely burled grain, reddish mid-brown and curly wood decorations. About 35 items competing for space on top of it.

There are FIVE ANGELS on the wall on either side of the photo - not particularly sweet, androgynous. No. They’re more male. One brandishes an Assyrian sword. He’s wingless. I roll out pieclay like a pie crust and then lighthandedly (as with pie crust) fling it about a bit, billow it, gather it very freely then finish with very realistic detailed faces and hands. Haven't made any for a while. Very fragile. Two on either side of the big picture over the sideboard. One is above that violin case at the piano corner and between them lives an Indonesian marionette - white face, faded rose clothes, but the sequins still sparkle. At over a foot tall it is a bit bigger than my angel guys and more colourful (I don’t believe in angels but they are nice to me - they can levitate, they can be fragile because they agree to live on the wall. They gave me a chance to be figurative but still play with clay…so don’t put them down!). A 6th is totally hidden behind the TV, “The Traveler”. Must have been a handy picture hanger there.

Visible on sideboard: upright rainstick, 1 ft. long, painted black with a snake with hot pink head and body yellow and blue and pink, and around little pink wiggles, like sperm. A little dark green curvy lamp with rose shade akimbo. An Ikea light - just a large frosted upright 15”rectangle. Another marionette, brown wood face, large eyes, red hat with blk and wht spots and flute covered with gold brocade held to his lips. Nearby 12 inch thin African spearsman, 8 or 9 small family pictures, a scramble of large newsprint with large “aleph” visible.

Almost finally, how could I forget? Under a footstool in front of the TV I hear her munching - QUEEN BEATRIX (of the Netherlands, not Ms. Potter). A Netherlands Lop with dark grey ears coming down, grey nose and eye patches on white, mostly white with large grey patch on back and some grey spots. A bit of a brush cut on top of head and a half circle profile. Her Majesty’s a Very Nice Girl but Doesn’t Have a Lot To Say. Though there's a metal pen under the TV table, its folded up and she runs free, so you might see her anywhere in the room. She has a little curvy-legged footstool embroidered with clunky flowers (by a mother or aunt of friend with acute design sense who hated it and gave it to ME). Suits HRH quite well. Sometimes she hops up (8 inches) and stands up for a good look around. She uses litter box of wood pellets. In interest of full disclosure I’ll admit the odd bunny bean misses the box. And bits of green hay get scattered on the floor at that end of the room. Now you see her, now you don’t. Pretty shy. She has chewed the wood baseboards only a little bit in two places. She does like to chew wires so most chords are sheathed in shiny plastic tubing. (She likes to hang out at the two power bar octopi.  Image: bunny having electric shock?) When she washes her face, like a cat, she flips up her ears one at a time. Part of her charm.

Behind me on the wall facing the piano wall are10 framed pix ceiling to floor, 4 Northern prints: ladies juggling, drum dancers, Senaktok, netting birds for a masted ship, photo of daughter wearing wreath, Valerie Palmer show invitations, dog team, hiker in our mountains. Tall narrow bookcase: books, chaotic.

Finally: usually the big table is not here. Usually the futon is here. But sometimes it is folded down into a bed and in it there is a very old lady, less than 5 ft tall, with a short fuzz of white hair, in it. Eyes closed, most often. Alzheimer's.

A quote from the movie Amadeus - “Too many notes.” Thanks for reading if you got this far!  Hope there’s something to work with.