Exploring the concept of home — is it a place or a feeling?
Driving through New Minas the other day I noticed red holiday banners that proclaim joy, peace and hope. While trying to be a good driver, I kept my eyes focused on them looking for love, but, unlike the candles we light during Advent, love was not included.
I think that fourth emotion of the season is what we cherish at Christmas. There is lots to love, however, at the holiday art exhibition on this month at the Harvest Gallery in Wolfville.
The theme for participating artists was ‘Home.’
According to gallery owner Lynda MacDonald, they chose the theme of ‘home’ as it is such an evocative word — one often associated with the holiday season. And yet, ‘home’ can mean so many things. It might be a landscape or a roof over one's head. Home might refer to family or the place where one flourishes.
This wonderful collection of works, from paintings to carving to jewelry, begins with one of local printmaker Laura MacDonald’s most popular images — the iconic view from Avonport Mountain. She asks, “Who doesn't feel at home when they see this view?”
For Woodside artist Doretta Groenendyk, “home is where stories happen.” She’s created three small family-focused paintings to prove her point.
Joyce Martin Neville made a print of the former family home, which was built circa 1835. Clinging to the hillside at Halls Harbour, this compact residence overlooks the well-known main wharf and lobster pound.
A most unique work called Marble Run is a house made of glazed earthenware. After a couple of transient decades, artist Marla Benton finally settled on the South Shore as home.
“The architecture struck me as delightfully bright and fun. This red house was made inspired by the buildings in Lunenburg. I created a marble run on the inside, inspired by the steep hills the town is based on.”
Cecil Day, another printmaker, made an etching of a house on Poole’s Island, Newfoundland. She photographed the house in its rocky setting thinking she could live there during a residency at Terra Nova Park.
“I empathized with its owner whom,
I thought, had carefully boarded it up to keep it secure until able to return,” Day said. That does show love for home.
A watercolour titled Side Entrance by Cluny Mahar depicts a very Nova Scotian practice. Often the main door is not the primary way we chose to enter most homes.
Wolfville artist Terry Drahos has chronicled each house she has lived in from birth to present day and two paintings of her works are in this exhibition. She uses layered fields of colour with intricately hand-cut stencils of maps and houses to illustrate home.
A fetching painting called White Rock with Seeking Figure by Horton High art teacher Paul Syme proves he finds inspiration close to home. His current works are emerging from trails in Gaspereau and White Rock. Each stroke and scrape documents a sincere gesture and expression of place.
Steven Rhude played with the idea of the Valley as a new home to someone unique. The central figure in his painting “could be from Ethiopia for all we know.” All we know is that she is standing in a beautiful field with Queen Ann's lace against a distant hillside.
American poet Henry Van Dyke contended that “every house where love abides, and friendship is a guest, is surely home, and home-sweet-home: for there the heart can rest.” I like that concept of light within a residence, but for some home is definitely geography.
Being with the people you love literally makes Christmas because, at best, the holiday is not about presents or entertainment. I agree with Thomas Chandler Haliburton who said if you want to value home, go abroad among strangers for a while. Or miss your children living in far off cities.
If you’d like to ponder this topic at a poignant time of year, stop into the Harvest Gallery. There’s plenty to see and the exhibit remains up until Dec. 31.