Deanne Fitzpatrick Rug Hooking Studio

seeing things from a certain perspective

Dear Diary, Today my neighbor Jan came over to tutor me. After she taught me five things we both agreed that I had enough to practice with on the new programs I am learning. You can only take so much in before you have to put it to work. I am learning, happily learning.

One of the things I am getting more interested in is photography, because with a picture I can really study the shape of something. Over the years I have hooked many trees but I always want to hook them again, better each time. I love to look at a tree with out branches above my head and see the tangle of form above me. They are so interesting. When I go to hook them I can never quite remember what I have seen so many times before. I need a quick reminder, not a photo to work from, that can be a hindrance. I just want a reminder, so that I have a better chance to capture the feeling.

Dear Diary, I am on a steep learning curve with some new computer programs. I keep up with all of this stuff because I do not want to get old and not be able to work  the things around me. I like to know. Yesterday I had the greatest visit with my nephew. He came in for a cup of tea, and it seems that now he is grown. We gabbed away like a couple of old friends. He is a writer, so we had lots to gab about. I was asking him about a couple of new writers, thinking how writing has moved away from the classical among younger Canadian writers. He told me that “gritty is the new hip.” I loved the notion and wrote it down right away. Gritty. Joel Hynes’s book, Down in the Dirt, comes to mind. Gritty, raw, shocking, but not really. If you grow up in Atlantic Canada, and manage to avoid gritty, you’re a rare bird, a special species all your own.

It also got me to thinking about brown being the new black, or fifty being the new forty. It’s all lies you know. Black remains black, and fifty is as fifty should be. My nephew and I were just shooting the grit….we both know that all that really is happening is change. It’s constant. One thing never really replaces another. What was will always be. Memory begins with breath, and brown never really replaces black, it just takes over where it left off.

Gritty is a new view, that comes with these times and it is media driven. Coarseness is so much more familiar to us on the radio, tv, internet. It is the new fodder for media. It does not replace anything, it is just itself. Years ago people sometimes referred to my father as “polished.” He was not educated but he was well read, spoke well, shined his shoes and wore a crisply pressed shirt. I run into people everyday who are polished. They keep themselves well, and carry things off nicely. “Polish” as in the “shine”, remains. It has not been overtaken. It just looks that way sometimes.

How could fifty be the new forty?  Why would you want it to be? Can you live ten years and forget it about so that you can say you are the new forty? In my mind every ten years  or so we profoundly change as people. We have some basic qualities that remain, but I notice that ten years makes me see things differently. So far with each decade I’ve seen progress, and there was not one of those I’d give up so that I could pretend I was ten years younger. The culture is obsessed with youth, and I won’t succumb. French tips and Long blond hair is only one kind of beautiful. There are many kinds of beautiful.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes. How oddly comforting it is to know there is nothing new under the sun. It certainly takes the pressure off creatively. You just keep doing what you are doing in your time and place. Ideas will come and go, time after time. It is the way of the world. On the one hand there is much change, but  on the other hand, so much remains the same.

Dear Diary, Today I hooked for two hours when my daughter came into my little studio and said , “Wanna go for a drive?”, So off we went, just driving around with no where to go. She said, “I love going no where, just driving around.” I felt it too. We ended up on the beach in Parrsboro, me eating butterscotch pie, her not even craving a bite of it. I have very little willpower when I see meringue pies, and host of other things. I was weaned on sugar.

The county I live in is in the thick of blueberry season so there were big trucks hauling berries, and the fields were mostly freshly picked, just waiting for the frost to return so they could put on the crimson coats. Lakelands, a bevy of rolling hills, one field after another is a favorite spot in this county after the first frost. I had no idea land could be that colour.

The rest of Sunday was surrendered to an afternoon nap. I admit part of Saturday had the same fate. I believe in naps like I believe in meringue pies.I have faith in them to restore me.

Tonight my hands want to hook, but I’ll let the heat subside a bit, and then back to the mat. Always back at the mat.

what's art?

Dear Diary, Like a good part of the western world I too am tired of the question what’s art?, but every once in a while it comes up for me again. The other day as left the Confederation Centre for the Arts I saw a wheel barrow on the front and for a second I thought it was an installation piece, then I realized a bunch of guys were working there. The wheel barrow had a great patina of cement and yellow handles and I said, you know, that is art to me. Art is in the mundane, the odd, the simple, the complex. It has no definition and requires no knowledge, just the feel of the viewer. I saw lots of great work in Charlottetown, but some how that wheelbarrow, on a cement stage struck me as art. It makes no sense and it makes all the sense in the world. One minute you feel like art is dead, the next you feel like art is everywhere.

I think the best thing is to not think too much about it, just let yourself respond to whats around. Art is in the bits of iron scattered around a yard, the old car left on the side of the road, the massive painting on canvas. Don’t look for it, just see it when it is there.

Deaar Diary,  I can hear the leaves growing it is so quiet here right now. I can hear myself think. Eugene Ionesco, said”I long for solitude yet I cannot stand it.” I was sitting with my annual read, Wallace Stegner’s, Crossing to Safety , the tea was made, and I thought I was happy to have a few minutes to myself, yet I came here to write. Alone, but not really. It is the new world, this one where the world is with us all the time, at our fingertips. A curse of distraction for artists because you can only make work on your own. You can do cooperative things, and collaborate, but really our real work is made on our own, alone. I show up to make something everyday that I can, whether it is making a paragraph, or a few stitches on the frame. I show up on my own, and sit with it. It is just me and the work, the hook, the wool, the words, all getting strung together. You have to get used to your own company. You have to sit with yourself as if you were an invited guest. You can’t breeze through making stuff or painting, or writing, or composing music. You have to be patient, and kind, and sit politely with yourself, and wait it out. You have to show up for yourself. Solitude is necessary.

Dear Diary,  I think it’s true that most people want to be understood, to be known. It is why we like to belong, part of a neighborhood like the one I wrote about yesterday. I was reading a book by Robin Sharma recently and it had plenty of common wisdom in it. One of the chapters describes how several times he took plane trips at at the end of the trip he knew all about his seat mate, but the seat mate had not asked one question of him. I wonder about such a lack of curiosity in people. Is it that they just plain forget, or are not interested. Are they lost in a world only of their own making, or are they nervous to engage you in a question. I suppose their are many answers.

I am a naturally curious person so I have to hold myself back from firing questions at people. I love to know. As Brenda who works with me says, “She just wants to know, she doesn’t care, she just wants to know.” This means not that I don’t care so much, as I won’t evaluate. I just like to know, where people come from, what they like to do, the music they like, the books they read. The truth be known, I’d like to look through their purse, but don’t because I know it is inappropriate. I am curious about the name of their lipstick, the colour of their day book, needless things. I don’t want to know what they do for a living or how much money is in their wallet. I refrain from asking people what they work at these days, rather I try to ask what they like to do.  Once I was sitting having a beer at a bar with a few people and this musician I know came in with his big leather bag full of God knows what and I told him what I was thinking, that I’d just like to go through that bag, paper by paper, save me asking him questions.  Years ago  when I worked with a bunch of women I asked one woman what she had in the brown paper bag in her hand. She opened it, showing me,and saying, “three kotex…now ya’ happy?”. We had a good laugh since we all knew I had been hoping for butter tarts, or a sandwich she might be talked into splitting with me.

Questions about people run through my head like water runs through a tap. It is, like Brenda says, not so much that it matters to me what people are up to. Rather I just like to know what they are having for supper, where they got their shirt, or how they made out on their road trip. So the thought of not knowing something about the people I spend banks of time with does not make sense to me. You never know what kind of load a soul is carrying if you don’t engage them a bit. I don’t mind answering questions either, especially from friends. Sometimes when I go for a drive with my friend Don Miller he comes up with some big interesting question for us to play with on the drive, it is a pondering question, one for us to play with as gad about.

I think a big part of trying to be interesting is to be interested in others, because you learn from them, and it gives you a bit more fodder I s’pose you might say. I love discovering, whether it is a great rock on a raggedy beach or it is a connection between two people I never knew existed. We are linked to each other, in and out, over and over, and getting to know each other makes us more of a community.I like knowing what’s in the bag and who’s carrying it, what can I say?

Dear Diary, I know it’s horrible for all the summer people, but I love a day that is cool enough for a light sweater.  My hooking took a beating this summer with the humidity. I hook for a bit in the morning but as the sun turns hot, I head off to the downtown studio to play with all the wool there, write, and meet the people who come to visit. A good part of my time there is spent preparing for workshops and getting ready for the fall. We have two groups coming to learn about hooking people, and another to learn about hooking sky, and the relationship between spirit and creativity. The second one I am doing with Don Miller, my friend. They are both full, and my expectations for them are high. I love seeing people come to town for the studio. I like to see them spend time in Amherst, get to know this place.

Yesterday, I dropped into the new deli, Simon Turner’s the Art of Eating. It is just two blocks from the studio, and I am waiting for a sandwich. I dropped in yesterday, and though he was not opened yet, it felt like a meeting place. He said, “I am not open but I can make you a cheese toastie.” I said I am hanging in for that big avacado and chicken sandwich he told me about. With in minutes there was a few more people standing in the door way, ad the place felt like it was always there. He has two big  gilt framed chalkboards telling me there’ll be oatcakes, and smoothies. The coolers are stocked with gorgeous looking food, and there’s an old antique red fridge, which he refers to as the sin fridge, filled with colas. It is a place I want in my town. I am glad he is opening his doors. It feels good.

He is next door to Heidi and Holger’s Old Germany Restaurant and plans to sell his sandwiches on their good home made bread. The Old Germany treats me so good when I bring our workshop guests there for lunch. I crave their chicken with home cut fries and yellow curry sauce on the side. The last six times I have been there I ordered the exact same meal. It is so good I don’t have the heart to try something different( so much for all that creativity advice I dispense about trying new things). A good meal is hard to find.

A few months ago Simon from the Art of Eating catered the opening of my friend Elizabeth’s  Damaris Wellness Centre and Aveda Spa, just across the street  from the studio and a block to the left. Elizabeth’s spa has been the talk of the town . She lit up the street with a big black awning, paired with red and white geraniums and licorice plants. She is making people happy day in day out, and bringing life back into our core. It makes me happy to walk by their geraniums. I drop in there to pick up soap for the studio, or treat for someone because I am glad to have them on my street. They helped to change the face of it, and I appreciate it.

Next door, My husband has a men’s wear store  (Mansour’s) that has been on our street for over eighty years. They have opened their doors to people since the great depression. I love watching people go by with suit bags, full of their wedding clothes, or feeling good about themselves cause they have just been dressed head to toe. Men hate to shop, and Mansour’s makes it easy for them. Robert has put cards for free socks in my studio so when you come ask for one and you can go next door, and get your husband some new socks on Robert. He wants people to go in and see the store, and know what he is doing in there, what his father did before him. It is a great store.

Just behind them, my high school  friend Patricia Ogden Leblanc gives pedicures, manicures and facials in my old studio place. Patricia is warm and kind, and when I go there it feels like old times, comfortable and easy. Across the parking lot, Darlene, always is happy to see you at Duncan’s Pub, and pour you whatever you need, whether it is a cup of tea or a guinness.

 Up on the corner, Beth Monroe, and her father run Pugsley’ s Pharmacy, where  I, comfortable can pick up my vitamin C, and know that she has a good store of really good chocolate, two basic necessities. Beth’s brick store front with the blue and white awning, was once owned by Charles Tupper, who was a father of confederation, and prime minister of Canada( it was a short run, but hey). I can count on Beth for anything from a lipstick to a good book. You never know what you’ll find there, and she has a sale shelf that makes me happy where she has ridiculously low prices on great stuff. Sometimes when I walk up the street I just go in her back door and walk out the front just so I can feel the place. I like it there.

This is just my corner of the town I call home. I like it here, I fit in. It is n’t perfect, but what place is. It is a place where people belong, and build a life. It is a hometown, a place where you can walk around and pick up most of what you need, and people will know you, and if you are fifty cent’s short, they’ tell you to come back tomorrow.