from freecycle to bookcrossing
memoir and art, from one of Canada's finest artists

From freecycle to bookcrossing - hope you enjoy reading this book!

As judysh said Emily Carr is one of Canada's finest artists and I love her work. So I couldn't pass this up when it showed up at the Winnipeg BookCrossers meetup. Thanks judysh.

I loved this book. I don't say that very often but this is an exceptional book. In the forword Ira Dilworth talks about Carr's writing process:
I have seen her "peeling" a sentence, as she called it,--a process which involved stripping away all ambiguous or unnecessary words, replacing a vague word by a sharper, clearer one until the sentence emerged clean and precise in its meaning and strong in its impact on the reader. As a result, there is in her writing the quality of immediacy, the ability, by means of descriptive words chosen with the greatest accuracy, to carry the reader into the very heart of the experience she is describing, whether it be an incident from her own childhood or a sketch of an Indian and his village--and that so swiftly as to give an impression almost of magic, of incatation.

I did feel carried into the places she described and I felt like I knew the people she met. I think the story that had the most strong effect on me was "Sophie". Sophie was a woman who came by Carr's studio in Vancouver to sell her baskets. Carr didn't have any money to pay her but Sophie told her she would take some old clothes. Sophie left the basket she wanted even though Carr said she would have to go back to Victoria to get the clothes and that wouldn't be for some time. Sophie told her she lived in the North Vancouver Mission and that anyone there would know her. Some time later Carr took the clothes over to Sophie and they became friends. One of the first things Sophie did was take Carr to the cemetary where her children were buried. Almost every year Sophie had a baby and almost every year she buried a child. Sophie had twenty-one children in all and none of them survived her. I think this story speaks volumes about the kind of person Emily Carr was. She could be good friends with an illiterate woman who had nothing, not even the children she bore.

In one of those amazing coincidences that seem to happen with reading while perusing the Globe and Mail website I found this article about Emily Carr's work being chosen for a prestigious show in Europe, the first ever Canadian chosen posthumously for dOCUMENTA.

The only thing that could have improved this book, in my opinion, would have been some drawings. Fortunately, in this day and age almost everything is available online and I pored over this website to look at many copies of her artwork. Great, great stuff.

This book will be reserved for the 2012 Canada Days release challenge.

I left this book together with I Heard the Owl Call my Name at the information map for the Old Pinawa Townsite. This release is for the 2012 Canada Days release challenge. The purpose of this challenge is to release books written by Canadian writers or about Canada into the wild. I am hoping to get a JE for at least one of these books because I saw two young girls discover them and take them to their mother.

I found this book together with I heard the owl call my name, at the Pinawa Dam Provincial Heritage Park. I am excited to read these books and release them somewhere else!