The 'Canadian Sport' in Scotland: Edinburgh Capitals v Fife Flyers, October 20, 2013, 6-8:30p.m.

At a wedding last week in Scotland, we were surprised to learn that there is a professional hockey league there, complete with five teams and paid players from around the world. There was a game on the Sunday evening before we left, so being the good Canadian hockey fans we are, we went to investigate what hockey in Scotland is like.

The Edinburgh Capitals rink is located in an ancient little arena just behind the national Olympic rugby stadium, Murrayfield. Murrayfield towers over the rest of the Haymarket area in Edinburgh, with bright, shiny silver stands; green, manicured grass, and eight-story billboards of their national rugby heroes in their masculine, sweaty form. Everyone knows where Murrayfield is, but no one knows that there is an ice rink there.

“They’re playing ice hockey at Murrayfield? Ya sure it’s nae Shinty?”

“What do they do? Freeze the field or something?”

“I nae heard of an ice hockey rink there hen.”

Below, and behind, Murrayfield arena is a small, white cement building with small, black lettering that read, “Murrayfield Ice Rink”. (The melting piles of snow gave it away.)

We went early because we were afraid that we might not be able to get tickets. After 45 years of watching hockey on television, for example, I have still never been to a Toronto Maple Leafs’ game. At 4:30p.m., an hour and a half before the puck drop, people were leaving from the Sunday afternoon ‘Disco Skate’ (the arena’s main source of revenue), and some of the Capital players were just arriving for the game.

We stopped one man with a ‘Hockey Canada’ bag, never dreaming that this would actually be one of the players.

“Are you from Canada? Do you know where the box office is?”

“No, I’m Czech. They don’t start selling til five.”

“Where did you get the bag?”

“Another player gave it to me.”

This encounter was similar to arriving at any travel rep game around Canada. You park. You bring in your bags with all of the other players, and you ask someone where the dressing room is. These guys might be paid to play hockey, but they are sure not treated like the huge Sidney Crosby celebrities you see in North America.

At 5:03p.m., the box office did indeed open for the 6p.m. game, and we and 23 others made our way in to get tickets. Think for a moment what you would have to do to get tickets to an NHL game in Canada: If you aren’t lucky enough to win the ‘season ticket’ lottery, you go online the first minute of the first hour the tickets become available. Then, you pray that you can afford, or get tickets, as close to the ice as you can. Tickets for the January 1, 2013 Winter Classic, for instance, are currently sold out, but the last tickets sold cost close to $1,000. At the Edinburgh Capitals ticket booth, we bought “gold” seats right beside the players’ bench for the whopping-low, bargain price of £8 each! Yes, you read that right. And yes, we were stunned.

Making our way into the arena, we had to walk through a dimly-lit, industrial-green corridor with the players, the professional players, coming and going in half states of dress and their sticks and equipment just lounging about the walls as if they were leftovers from some beer league match. No security. No walls. No ‘do not enter’ signs. Just the public milling about with macaroni pies and poorly-made coffee (yes that’s the same) on their way to their seats. Our children have never been this close to professional players. In Canada, the security won’t even let you near the ice, let alone the changerooms!

We all looked at each other, “something must be wrong,” my one son said,

“Are these the players?”

“Wow!” the youngest said, “these must be really amazing seats!”

When we finally came out of the corridor to our seats, we were indeed behind the players. I know, I know, you are waiting for the catch. We were too. But unbelievably, in this old, decrepit arena, with seats still made of wood, our ‘gold seats’ were behind the players, and I don’t mean they were up behind a wall, sectioned off, with glass and several security guards checking our tickets and telling us to stay back. No, they were right behind the players. Reach out and tap a guy on the helmet kind of behind. Say, ‘Skate hard!’ kind of behind. Watch the steam come out of the helmets kind of behind.

Maple Leaf and Senator fans will be happy to hear that there were actually Toronto (four) and Ottawa (two) jerseys in the crowd. Two patrons wearing Toronto jerseys sat beside us. They said they were sent the sweaters from family in Canada; they have never been to Canada themselves.

All the other viewers were wearing soccer scarves and chanting football songs. The two teams’ fans are segregated – the home team fans sit behind the benches, and the visiting team fans sit on the opposite side of the arena. (There are no seats behind the nets. This is where the coffee, meat pies and chips are sold.)

If you close your eyes, it sounds like you are at an international soccer match with the drums drumming and chanting, rather than a hockey game. In fact, the announcer calls it a ‘match’ too, not a game, and the goalie is called a ‘keeper’ by the patrons in a country full of soccer.

Predictably, the majority of power lines on the teams are made up of North American and Czech players. The Scottish league is only allowed to hire 10 “imports” at a time, however, so the other lines are a mixture of local Scottish or EU players who all work full-time at other jobs during the day. What was interesting was the North American players did have very distinctive moves. You know they are from Canada just by what they did. The defenders from Canada or the U.S.A., for instance, were superb at backward skating, using the long stick, checking in the corners, and throwing a fit if any player from the opposite team hung around the net after the whistle. The forwards from North America all used the backward short pass and kept the passing hole in front of the net open. One poor Scottish defender named Beatson kept shielding his goalie, and unfortunately scored on his own net twice by missing the puck and letting it bounce off of his own glove.

Sadly, the other passing lines couldn’t receive the passes much better. I don’t think I have ever seen so much icing, off-sides, or pucks bounce off of boards. One “newly acquired import” from Canada named Reaney was so overweight that he could barely move on the ice. Essentially, he was making $30,000 a year in a beer league. So all you players out there who love hockey, but feel like you’re too old – begin applying to the Scottish league!

The one truly redeeming quality of the Scottish hockey league is the informal, family atmosphere that exists between the players and the fans. They walk in and out of the arena together; share the same halls; and greet each other and chat informally both before and after the ‘match’. In this way, all of the Scottish players are brought up through the same club, starting as fans when they’re children and becoming involved in the teaching programs and workshops like the country’s top soccer club leagues.

In Canada, it would be very unlikely for most young players to ever met an NHL player. They are kept separate and above from the plebian population (unless one has the money to pay for the privilege of even having a card signed). It was nice to know that professional players, even in Scotland, actually dress, warmup, and change and chat after the game just like any other person. Yes, they actually are human; their equipment stinks the same as any bag in the back trunk or basement. They are not just gold two-dimensional statues on a card – they are real working players! Good on ye!

Canadian Abstract Art - 2. "I don't get it"

“What is this suppose to mean?” I often get as I attend to the gallery, “This looks like something a four-year-old would do!”

The comments are always about abstract art, “I don’t get it.”

But what’s to get? It’s an image that tells a story.

The wonderful thing about the mysterious shapes or markings; drawings and seemingly arbitrary paint drippings we see in modern art galleries is that it frees the imagination to run. Remember when you were a child, lying back on the green grass on a warm Summer’s day looking up into the cumulous clouds?

Remember the clouds taking shape:

“There’s a rabbit!”

“That’s a man with a cane!”

“There’s a dragon chasing a star.”

There was a story in each one of those clouds, and it’s those stories I search for in the abstracts that are in front of me in the gallery. What real-life connections does this shape/these colours remind me of? What feeling? What myth?

The wonderful thing about abstract drawings are the viewer’s interpretation, not the artist’s. Sure, the artist may have begun with some intent, but in the end, it’s what the viewer sees that brings life to the object.

And life there is! A story hidden amongst lines and colours and contours that we can bring out of the page.

Years ago, some of the brightest students in my class were students that didn’t have televisions because, on a daily basis, they had to let their minds do the work of the story: creating the vision, the characters, the sounds, the colours. Now, with television and film; ipods and internet, so much of this constant creative work is readily completed for us, that we no longer need to think. That makes being in a gallery twice as hard for the average person.

There’s a story there waiting to pop out at you. Look. Watch. Feel. See. Imagine what’s going on.

Buenos Aires - 10. Fini

Every trip must come to an end, and as we packed and left for the aeroport, we realized BA just didn't want to let us go.
Our taxi was late.
The line in the aeroport that came to an end left us without seats together,
and when we finally were called to the gate two hours late, we waited another three hours just to depart (a baggage strike).
Buenos Aires left us with the impression of a city behind a misty wall.
Two days later, we arrived home, but somehow, the duality of the trip, the city, the people remains with us like a film of soap that was difficult to rinse off.

On the surface, the buildings and towers of Buenos Aires have a grand, old-world Parisian richness to them, but beyond the facade, was a city of third-world poverty existing quite seemlessly alongside the European image. If you have ever been to South Africa, the cardboard and tin towns exist within the same school and town boundaries as millionaires. It's unsettling for visitors who come from countries with greater numbers living in the middle classes.

Could we co-exist like this?

International Art: 2. From Bedrooms to Deserts in Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago is famous for its collection of Impressionist paintings, and if you have ever been a college student with a poster of some pastel flowers on your dorm wall, then you will be amazed to look at the real source of that piece of wallpaper.

The first time I went to Paris and saw the ‘Mona Lisa’ at the Louvre, I was shocked by how tiny the painting was. ‘How could it be so small?!’ I thought, ‘when she is so big and famous?’  Besides being small, you can’t even find her because in Paris she is known only by her nickname on all of the signs, “La Joconde”.

You will have the same experience with every original you see.

Sure, you think you know Monet’s wheat fields, or Van Gogh’s pathetically small bedroom with the cute little wooden chair, but until you are standing right in front of the master that has spawned millions of posters and screensavers everywhere, you have not truly met its depth. An original painting is almost three-dimensional. Standing looking at something original like Manet or Monet, you feel as if you are greeting royalty, or an internet date. “Well, so there you are! That’s what you look like in person! You know, you are really not quite what I expected.”

And after you have voyeured through Van Gogh’s bedroom and Georgia O’Keefe’s ‘Red and Pink Rocks’, move on to the lesser known, but just as fascinating artists in Chicago’s modern design sections.

 

Hughie Lee Smith, for example, has a huge landscape piece called, “Desert Forms” which I swear could be a scene right out of Waiting for Godot. In fact, if I were to set the stage for Godot, I would want to use Smith’s version as a blueprint. The characters are eerie, alone, desolute, but still seemingly going somewhere or nowhere.

 

And in a city known for its architectural design, the Art Institute does not let you down. There are cushy arm chairs designed out of corrugated cardboard, and rooms designed out of old computer monitors.

 Walking outside in Chicago, you walk amongst the giants of building with diverse cityscapes at every compass point, and sculptures of those giants at every lake-side step.

The moral is: when in a large city, visit the masters, and the masters-to-be.

International Art: 1. China's Ai Weiwei: Without end or without direction?

On August 14^th, we anxiously stood in line under a 100m long snake with 50 other members of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) to get a glimpse of one of the most sensationalized contemporary artists of this century: China’s Ai Weiwei.

Weiwei has spent the last decade under house arrest outside of the Beijing airport. His severe political activism and ‘voice that will-not-be-silenced’ has left him with a laneway of colourful video monitors and sound recorders compliments of the Chinese national government.

Despite this, Weiwei is an avid tweeter, facebook and internet communicator, and has sent his artistic visions and plans worldwide to be re-created and displayed elsewhere. This global political exposure has also made him one of the richest artists in the world. On the date of his Toronto opening, Forbes rated Ai the third richest artist in the World! (Number one and two were both gallery owners and sellers, not traditional artists at all.)

Weiwei’s works are circular. An architect by trade, he builds pieces without any beginning or end. ‘Bicycles’ have no seats or handle bars, and are connected throughout the piece. Similarly, ‘stools’ are all intimately connected without a single nail. You cannot separate one from the other; they are a whole.

This may be due to the Chinese culture of group cohesion, the whole working as one. It may also be a comment on where there is ‘no direction’, there is no one to lead.

More mercurial pieces such as ‘moon phases’ are a telescope through the room. Reminding us that at any one time, you can only ever seen a ‘phase’ of a person passing through their changing cycle of life.

Sadly, Weiwei has also been subject to a great deal of pain in his life. Much of this exhibit is taken over as a memorial to all of the school children who have died in substandard schools ruined by earthquakes. Stakes (and snakes) from the dead wreckage, smashed pots of ancestors, and a mourning wall of names stand as reminders to Weiwei that without integrity, we kill.

Contemporary art has the power to do this: it makes you think critically and reflexively. It challenges your world view. Weiwei does this without beginning, context or end. We confront the parallels on our own axis of the globe.

Canadian Art - 1. Konopaki, Neufeld, and Shuebrook

This next occasional travel series documents some of the visual art accessible in galleries across Canada, and the collective stories it tells.

Visual artists capture emotional thoughts, feelings, and living experiences on paper, and in other ways, much like a writer would capture a day or feeling in poetry, short story, or essay. For the next month and a half, anyone who has ever tried to ‘draw’ their feelings, or scrapbook a memory, will have the pleasure of seeing how Vancouver print artists Rodney Konopaki and Rhonda Neufeld do it.

    Each of their drawings begin with a single drawing or line or colour, then more is added to the paper to try to depict the emotion and how that day felt in colours and lines. For many of the pieces displayed, Konopaki and Neufeld walked through Banff National Park, and took in what the weather was like, things that they continually saw out of the corner of their eyes, and what inner feelings rose to the surface. Most of us would try to describe this in words, but Konopaki and Neufeld succeed in depicting the sensations of the day in a drawing diary. Pieces in the ’21 Days’ collection included everything from old snow fencing to corners of tickets and worn paper found, raising scrapbooking to a higher plane.

     Each piece becomes a daily journal of the walk the artists took. In ‘Initiate’, there is an explosion of black fuel from a hot yellow sun background. The Artist’s idea erupting in black ink onto the page and moving forward to grow and grow.

My favourite is ‘Summer’ in which a bee, or perhaps a firefly, lazily lights a meandering air above soft green ground and slow pieces of water. It’s how Summer should feel: light, soft, slow and whimsical.

Ontario artist Ron Shuebrook celebrates his 70^th birthday in the Thames Art Gallery by displaying a collection of geometric charcoal drawings that have never been seen before. Shuebrook’s pieces are Hoffman-like: the attempt is made to represent settings in their most elemental state. Like Konopaki and Neufeld, Shuebrook focuses on the exterior environment. What is the base outline of the shape looking up through a ceiling, at a sky, as in ‘Radiance’?

The elements of shape through a parking lot? At a moment’s glace, what is the outline of a harbour and its slips, in ‘Wharf’?

All of these ‘emotions’ are on display at the Thames Art Gallery in Chatham, Ontario until October 6, 2013, and you can meet the artists themselves on Friday-the-13^th of September, 7p.m.!