For others, Main Street in Twillingate is just the main access point to the heart of the community.
Artist Nina Elliott sees something different. Rather, it is Elliott’s yarn-bombing alter ego, the Rock Vandal, who sees the street as an open canvas waiting for that splash of colour.
Starting this week, the Rock Vandal has been stapling pieces of her yarn artwork — she always gets permission before placing them — to various clapboard siding buildings on Main Street in what she believes is Newfoundland’s first open air art gallery.
“I am considering this my first show,” she said.
The plan is to showcase eight or nine of her freehand crochet creations on various buildings along the street, just as would be done in an art gallery. Each piece will stay up for two weeks.
She will unveil some new pieces during the street art exhibition, while also reworking some of her old favourites, like the Waldo piece she moved around the region last summer.
“Overall, the theme of this is uplifting art, and the characters that I am bringing back will be reimagined with some form of coronavirus takeaway,” she said.
It was a project the Rock Vandal had planned to put together over the summer, but the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans. She had the idea of helping attract tourists to the Twillingate region through her street art.
However, instead of trying to draw people to the area, the exhibit will now serve to offer some positivity to her neighbours.
“Given what is going on, it just felt like this was the right time to launch it,” said the Rock Vandal. “It is a little bit for me, but also just for the community.
“It is one thing to roll out the red carpet for the tourists, but we have to look out for each other right now.”
To help promote the idea and her work, the Rock Vandal contacted the Town of Twillingate and its recreation director, Jeff Blackler.
He was only too happy to help with the project any way he could. It has mostly been on the town’s Facebook page, and Blackler said each post he makes is followed by a big response from followers.
“In these times, anything that can get people out and active and something to look forward to is a bonus in our town,” said Blackler.
Speaking of getting people out, the exhibit will be laid out in a way that the residents of Twillingate will be able to enjoy it from their cars or on their evening walks, with a focus on maintaining physical distancing.
The Rock Vandal wants people to use her work to help break the monotony of the times.
“It is really about bringing colour and positivity to the community,” she said.
Through the COVID-19 pandemic, silver linings are starting to appear. These linings come in the form of music, artisanship and food.
More and more people are starting to showcase themselves and their talents on social media as a way combat the cabin fever that grips them through the physical distancing regulations.
The Rock Vandal found her lining and she is encouraging others to do the same.
“My hope is that everyone can try to be considerate to one another during this time and figure out what you can do to make your community a positive place,” she said. “Find a silver lining for you and maybe how you can share it.”
Nicholas Mercer is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering Central Newfoundland for Saltwire Network.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
