A new art series in Fort McMurray aims to connect artists and seniors, to help reduce social isolation during the pandemic.
The art series is called the Art of Conversation and being produced through Arts Council Wood Buffalo and St. Aidan’s Society.
Cory Huber, a local musician, was paired with 84-year-old Rudy Loy.
Loy, a woodworker, crafts ornate wooden boxes that he donates to charities. Huber creates progressive hip-hop music.
During the summer the two were matched up for the project. It started with a phone call, but then they met in person. Huber got to see Loy’s house and the extent of his woodworking.
“He made the deck, the railings. Everything has Rudy written all over it,” said Huber.
As Huber toured around Loy’s house, he noticed the furniture in the living.
Loy had planned to build custom living room furniture for his wife, and he finished the coffee table. But before he got to the next piece, his wife died.
Huber took this moment, alongside Loy’s woodworking, and created a country song for him.
Listen to Rudy’s Song on YouTube:
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“It’s a nerve-wracking experience,” said Huber. He wrote a country song for Loy, because that’s Loy’s preferred style of music, but it was new territory for Huber.
He spent time listening to country music and studying it to make sure he could write a song that would speak to Loy.
Huber is also a woodworker, and decided to save the song on a CD and present it to Loy in a box he made himself.
They listened to the song together.
“It was a big relief to know that the music really spoke to him and he sort of approves of the project overall,” said Huber. “It’s a good feeling.”
Loy said the song was uplifting.
Luay Eljamal, programs manager for Arts Council Wood Buffalo, said initially the project was supposed to be a collaboration with artists and seniors that ended with the creation of a mural for public display, but it wasn’t feasible during the pandemic.
So the council had to get creative.
“The goal was always to engage seniors in the arts,” said Eljamay.
He said that many seniors felt isolated before the pandemic, but now face an environment that is even more isolating.
The initial call-out for artists went out in May. The arts council paired 31 artists with 35 seniors.
Eljamay said at first, he wasn’t sure how successful the project would be.
“You’re putting a lot of trust in two complete strangers,” said Eljamay. “It was encouraging to see everybody stepped up.”
There was a range in mediums and styles, from songs, paintings and poems, all the way to balloon art. All are displayed in a virtual gallery on the council’s website.
Fort McMurray balloon artist Nelly Wati was paired with Alan Reeve.
At first, Wati said it was a little “awkward.”
Huber’s box sits betwixt Loy’s ornate boxes. Behind are dozens of cards from around the world. They come from people thanking Loy for his donated boxes. (Submitted by Cory Huber)
But that awkwardness lifted as the conversation wore on and Wati got to know Reeve a little better.
She discovered he used to be a police officer, and now he’s a photographer.
Wati made him a balloon sculpture of a police officer and a camera. A few days later, Reeve came to her house with a print of one of his photos of the Snye.
“I was so surprised,” said Wati. Now it’s displayed in a glass cabinet in her home.
Nelly Wati made a balloon sculpture depicting a policeman and a camera. (Arts Council Wood Buffalo)
Even now, some of the seniors and artists are still friendly emailing, painting together remotely or calling to check-in.
Arts Council Wood Buffalo purchased all the pieces, and gifted them to the seniors.
Wati said she hopes the art project happens again.
And it will, according to programs manager Eljamay. He said Suncor has already sponsored the project for next year.
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.
