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The Kaleidoscopic-Eyed Girl
After being thrilled with the random adventures offered by last year’s inaugural Nuit Blanche in Toronto,it was hard to resist an offer to participate in this year’s event when George Brown College put a call to artists for project proposals.
Working in collaboration with fellow artists Iza Bryniarska, Patricia Gaviria and Ruth Skinner, we proposed an interactive piece, “The Girl With The Kaleidoscope Eyes”. The concept for the piece developed out of the stories we have shared with each other about our lives - our childhoods and our families, our experiences growing up. Though the four of us spent our early years in different countries and speaking different languages (Ruth and I are both from PEI, but she was from Parkdale and I lived in Charlottetown, two solitudes in their own way), it is remarkable how similar our experiences have been. So many of our stories resonated with each other, we decided to explore these through words and images; to see the overlapping and weaving of our stories creates new stories, in the way a kaleidoscope constantly shifts patterns and creates a new view, we hope to provide the viewer with the possibility of experiencing the infinite narratives from our shared story-telling.
It was after our proposal was submitted and approved and our work began on the piece that when reading Michael Ondaatje’s novel Divisadaro I came across this quote that eerily describes our endeavour:
"For we live with those retrievals
from childhood that coalesce and
echo throughout our lives, the way
shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope
reappear in new forms and are songlike in
their refrains and rhymes, making up a single
monologue. We live permanently in the
recurrence of our own stories,
whatever story we tell."
George Brown College is participating in Nuit Blanche as part of their 40th Anniversary Celebrations. There will be an official opening at the College at 7PM and, of course, the work will be viewable from 7 to 7.
Come drop by and say hello.