While attending art school, I spent a lot of class time attending peer classroom critiques. Do these sessions actually help students become better artists? And, now I’m working as an artist, I’m wondering, How do I get fair feedback on my work?

Ottawa, Ontario

Let’s pop the question: Is it possible to arrive at a working definition of what constitutes an inspired and technically competent piece of art during classroom peer critiques at art school?  Or, in other words, can we use an objective “measuring stick” that instructors and peers alike could apply to provide constructive feedback on assignments completed by art students? In answering this question, I’d say the consensus leans towards, “not really.”

Yet, working towards a BFA, I participated in hours upon hours of peer “crits.” These evaluations are used across Canada and generally accepted as pedagogically sound[1]. Yet, as an older student with decades of office-based performance reviews behind me, I was confused about the open-ended nature of these professor-guided peer evaluations.

While participating in critiquing well over 600 student assignments, I didn’t hear much, if anything, that wasn’t within the whitewashed boundaries of being benign, politically correct, and flattering.

I have no intention to doubt my fellow students for their participation in critiques. The art works presented, many of them proof of concepts delivered under extreme time pressure, are often discussed with considerable sophistication. Either at university or prior to arrival, students seem to have embraced concepts such as the objectification of the female body[2] and the “male gaze”[3] and the “white cube.”[4] Many seem to have internalized valuable vocabulary. Students talk about an object’s materiality; they speak only on behalf of their own experience of the work; they find a piece “compelling”; they “read” the piece one way or another; or conclude the piece “references” or “hints” at other ideas, or maybe even other works of art. In this context, professors and many peers provided helpful feedback on my work. I’m thankful for those class critiques.  

Yet, it seems to me, constructive feedback can only be truly constructive when it’s possible to say the obvious when necessary: this work isn’t ready, it’s no good, it’s not inspiring, it’s not technically close to meeting basic standards of competency and so on and so forth. Classroom “crits” don’t seem to offer that moment. At least, I haven’t seen it happen in public. (Or, within my own experience, in private after class.) In other words, nobody ever told me the assignments I submitted sucked. And, I’m 100% sure quite a lot of my art works did!

Why?

As a cub reporter in daily news, I learned the value of caring editors. Bosses who saw potential and actually took the time to tell me a piece of writing didn’t meet basic standards of good journalism: solid writing, fact checking, CP style, a compelling interview and so on and so forth. I can only think of one way to become a better writer. Someone has to care enough to tell you at least a few times that your piece is no good — at all. Rewrite it. Get feedback again. Rewrite it again. And, if deadline allows, again and again.

Art students and professional artists deserve the same bold, if not (at times) painful but caring feedback. Don’t necessarily crush my ego, but give me feedback that makes me try again. And again. To create something more ready for an audience.

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[1] West, Debi, 4 Reasons Critiques Need to Be Part of Your Curriculum. Retrieved from https://theartofeducation.edu/2018/01/08/creative-class-critiques/

[2] de Beauvoir, Simone, 1961, The Second Sex, New York: Grune and Stratton

[3] Berger, John. 1972, Ways of Seeing,  BBC

[4] O’Doherty, Brian. 1976, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of Gallery Space, Artforum.

4. Kirsch, Corinna. 2014, The “Painting Is Dead” Versus “Painting Is Back List, 2014. Retrieved from

http://artfcity.com/2014/02/04/the-painting-is-dead-versus-painting-is-back-list/

[5] Rosenthal, Mark. 2003, Understanding Installation Art from Duchamp to Holzer. New York: 2003

[6] Clement Greenberg,Cement. 1945-1949, The Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol 2. John O’ Brian, ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

In 2018, I was given an opportunity to analyze visitors’ responses to Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood, a major exhibition at the AGO. Note: my views expressed below are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the AGO or any other entities. https://ago.ca/exhibitions/every-now-then-reframing-nationhood

Toronto, Ontario

From the beginning, the Art Gallery of Ontario allotted a significant piece of exhibition real estate for visitors to leave comments after seeing Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood.

The large exhibition in Toronto during Canada’s sesquicentennial featured “Postcards to Canada,” a  visitors response centre with large metal bulletin boards. Postcards were made available which prompted guests with a few questions. “What is your message to Canada? Is it a question? Advice? A memory?”

Well over 10,000 visitors from across Canada and around the world replied. They wrote, scribbled, doodled, and posted their responses. 

What did they have to say? A recent study of these responses to Reframing Nationhood reveal only 16 per cent of visitors who left a comment suggests Canada can do better when it comes to our Colonial relationships with Indigenous Peoples and racialized groups.

The overriding ambition of Reframing Nationhood was to give voice to Indigenous artists, Black-Canadians, and racialized groups. Curated by Andrew Hunter with Quill Christie-Peters and Anique Jordan, the exhibition ran from just before Canada Day 2017 until February 2018. The exhibition included works by established artists such as Robert Houle, Bonnie Devine and Barry Ace as well as emerging talents such as Esmaa Mohamoud.

Regardless of Reframing Nationhood’s potential short comings, the content of the art, interpretive texts, and exhibition publications overwhelmingly encouraged visitors to reflect on Canada’s history with Indigenous Peoples and racialized groups.

AGO Director and CEO Stephan Jost, in his foreword to the exhibition catalogue, writes, “My hope is that this exhibition will contribute to more complex and inclusive narratives of Canadian nationhood and art history.” Hence, presumably, the desire to encourage visitors to leave responses to the exhibition.

Even after removing responses from the study which were entirely unrelated to anything the exhibition had to offer (say, a comment such as “I love Justin Bieber”), fewer than 25 per cent of responses seem to align with a desire for Canada to seek “more complex and inclusive narratives” of this country’s nationhood.

(Completed in summer 2018, my study looked at a random sample of response cards to be 95 per cent confident findings accurately represent the number of responses received within a five per cent margin of error. I received support from several mentors with advanced academic standing in program evaluation methodology to design my methodology.)

Fewer than four per cent of visitors leaving a comment explicitly express regret about Canada’s colonial relationship with Indigenous Peoples. These visitors use words such as Indigenous, settler, Indian (Act), and similar vocabulary which suggests more awareness about the country’s history. For example, one visitor states, “I will work toward a future where my children receive a critical, nuanced education about our complex history; one that decolonizes and brings us closer to justice for all.”

In contrast, almost half of visitors who left a comment at Reframing Nationhood embrace Canada’s sesquicentennial without reservation and simply wish the country a happy birthday.

Another third express sentiments categorized as “the world needs more Canada,” often based on visitors’ own experiences as newcomers to this country. A number of these visitors write deeply personal messages and express thankfulness on being here for decades, for building a good life in this country.

“From the moment I landed in Canada I’ve felt a sense of calm. Thank you for that,” writes one visitor. Others thank Canada for peace and offering a place where they felt welcomed. “This March I became a Canadian Citizen. I’m greatful (sic) to be a Canadian and more my future within this country (sic),” wrote one visitor. A third guest simply writes: “Thank you Canada for protecting us!”

In so far as Canadian AGO visitors may represent the attitudes of the general Canadian population, study findings suggest Canadians hold deeply entrenched views about this country’s dominant historical narratives. And, many seem to have internalized “brand Canada,” feel good slogans. Again and again, visitors scribbled the comment “The world needs more Canada,” the trademark owned by Indigo Books and Music Inc. and loved by politicians.

Even as Reframing Nationhood was opening its doors, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a news release issued on Canada Day 2017 applauded this country for preserving Indigenous institutions, languages, cultures and faiths.

In this context, it hardly comes as a surprise that exposure to art by some of Canada’s renown artists – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – seems unable to sufficiently engage visitors to help them think more broadly about our country’s nationhood.  

So, what would? Canada’s 20-dollar bill issued in 2004 features an artwork by Indigenous sculptor Bill Reid and a quote by novelist Gabrielle Roy from Quebec. “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”

Unfortunately, as responses to Reframing Nationhood suggest, art on its own may not be able to open minds when views are deeply entrenched and perpetuated by government-endorsed, feel good slogans.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 concluded that Canadian school curricula must be re-written to offer a more complete picture of Canada’s history. Visitor responses to Reframing Nationhood confirm the urgent need for school boards, educators and politicians across Canada to heed this recommendation.

Here’s an editorial I wrote for a faith-based community newspaper I’ve been associated for years.

Toronto, Ontario

After several attempts to fix drainage problems in my downstairs bathroom, the inevitable moment arrived earlier this winter. I could either continue to mop up nasty toilet floods or call a plumber.

He arrived (a small victory, I may add, in downtown Toronto). He fixed the toilet. He gave me a lecture. First, don’t use three-ply toilet paper, he said. “Second, stop tossing your dental floss into the toilet. It plugs the drains.”

It goes without saying that I passed on my learnings to my husband: “You need to immediately stop throwing your dental floss into the toilet.” For anyone married longer than a few days, what comes next is no surprise. He utterly denied to have ever dropped a single piece of dental floss into our bathroom toilet or any other toilet he may have ever set his eyes on in his lifetime. This marital discussion carried on for some time [fill in the various blanks].   

I wasn’t pleased a few hours later when I noticed a piece of dental floss floating in the toilet. Unpleasant marital thoughts filled my mind. Until, and I’m ashamed to admit it, I realized my beloved had not yet entered the bathroom, and since the dog doesn’t floss her teeth, and our kids long left the house, and, really, there was no other breathing creature nearby other than myself, I could come to only one stunning conclusion. I was the guilty party. My dental floss helped cause the plumbing mess.

How hard it is to break a bad habit. Even now, weeks later, I still catch myself dropping dental floss where it shouldn’t go.

This brings me, in all seriousness, to the Apostle Paul in Romans 7 where he says in despair: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

When we think about our sinful nature, both collectively as church communities, in politics, or individually, it’s sometimes easier to think about the “big stuff.” We think about murder, adultery, lust, debauchery, or remember the Church’s validation of Apartheid or slavery, the country’s treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. And, let’s be honest, when we think about the big stuff, daily little sins don’t seem that bad, really. As Leonard Cohen sings in You Want It Darker, released shortly before his death last year, “I struggled with some demons/ They were middle class and tame/I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim/You want it darker.”

Yet, more often than not, it’s the little stuff that does matter – in relationships, in churches, in politics. It matters when we boldly blame a loved one for a small error. It matters, for example, when a church community flatly refuses to play the organ – never again – when some members still love that organ.  It matters when a newly elected President in the USA allows his spokeswoman to come up with “alternative facts” that deny the crowds attending his inauguration were measurably smaller than those attending the inauguration of former President Obama.

We commit incriminating acts (dental floss comes to mind), often without even realizing we’re doing so. Thus, we cry out with Paul, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.” Wretched habits are difficult to acknowledge. We loath to admit to ourselves we feel tempted, some of us, by fear mongering ideas promoted by Conservative leadership candidate Kelly Leitch. (What’s the big deal? Why not test new immigrants and refugees for “anti-Canadian” values?)

Ah! It’s frustrating, isn’t it, that sinful nature and its insidious ways.

And isn’t this exactly why Christ’s love for us, for our communities and political leaders changes everything? “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life … nor things present nor things to come nor powers … nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Editorial first appeared in Christian Courier, 2017

This article first appeared on the OCAD University online news section.

Toronto, Ontario

“Keep one eye on your passion and the other on the real world.”

It’s a piece of wisdom sculptor David Salazar received from his grandfather in Ecuador years ago.

It’s also sage advice the artist had a chance to share frequently with OCADU students and recent grads last fall as the first alumnus participant in the new Creative Professionals-in-Residence program.

Launched last September, the professional residency program for OCADU alumni is coordinated by the Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers (CEAD). During the fall and winter terms, the program intends to connect current students and recent grads with two successful alumni who each make themselves available to students for about a day each week.

“If you want to be an artist, how do you make it a reality?” asks Salazar. His studio practice focuses on hand modeling clay and fabricating sculpture. In 2017, he completed the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design degree at OCADU. His public commissions include 2012 Carnival, Rio de Janeiro; Spadina Museum, Nuit Blanche 2015 in Toronto, and, in the same year, two permanent public art sculptures in Georgetown, Ont., commissioned by First Capital Realty Inc.

“You can have a lot of fun with it, but you have to hustle,” says Salazar. The father of two pre-school children, he says art students also have to define for themselves what success looks like after finishing school.

In his mentoring role, he says he saw “a lot of anxiety” when students start to envision what it may be like to be a practicing artist in the world beyond school. “It’s not just eight to nine hours a day,” he says, adding he spends many hours applying for grants, commissions, and running his business.

“Go crazy about your ideas, but keep focused on what it takes to keep your practice afloat,” he says. Salazar also works as an exterior and interior house painter to pay his household bills.

Last fall, Salazar shared the spotlight with Mahmood Popal, a 2007 OCADU grad with a focus on industrial design and fine art. In 2011, Popal launched MAAST, a design agency with an client list that includes Quantum Coffee, Danforth Music Hall and BrainStation.

Shellie Zhang, community animator at CEAD, says most university graduates, regardless of their area of study, experience anxieties about transitioning into the workforce. Nevertheless, she says how to best connect to the labour market “isn’t always as clean cut” for art and design students. Students can contact Zhang to arrange a time to chat with one of the mentors who just started their winter term residency.

Student response to the new residency program was “pretty great” last fall, says Zhang. “It takes the intimidation out of networking.”

Ante Benedikt Kurilić, a fourth year sculpture student, class monitor, and president of the foundry club at OCADU, says talking to Salazar helped him envision his future as a practicing artist.

“Everything is hard work,” says Kurilić, 27, who came to Canada from Croatia in 2013. He plans to do figurative art and public sculptures. “It has been very beneficial for me to talk to somebody who has walked the path,” he says about his chats with Salazar. 

Meantime, when asked to define “mentoring,” after a brief pause, Salazar says, “I think it’s listening, right?” It’s a skill he took to heart as a boy spending time with his grandfather and generously applied as one of two newly-minted mentors at OCADU. “I love sculpture, I dream sculpture, I breathe sculpture,” he says. “Students and new grads who want to be an artist have to balance their passion with frequent reality checks to keep their art practice going.”

Toronto, 2018

This review first appeared in the OCAD University online news section in 2019.

Union Station, Toronto, Ontario

Two main group shows associated with the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art may attract most visitors this fall, but a peripheral site at Union Station deserves attention for questioning T.O.’s identity as a Great Lakes city.

The stated theme for the Biennial —  the shoreline dilemma – paraphrases what scientists refer to as the coastline paradox. Coastlines are difficult to measure, shift over time, and are often deeply impacted by human activities.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, chief curator Candice Hopkins says, “Toronto, despite being a Great Lakes city, has its back to the water.”

In the exhibition The View from Here, Toronto-based artist Luis Jacob offers the viewer a collection of exquisite historical maps showing growing urban development along Lake Ontario starting in 1677. He pairs these maps with full colour photos of Toronto today.

The print Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall, 2017, features the multi-coloured TORONTO sign standing at the edge of the iconic cement pond in front of City Hall.

Now wait a minute? Since when is a square, cement pond part of the city’s narrative – the site where we invite tourists to take their selfies?

It’s more than symbolic that Jacob’s exhibition is located at Union Station. No longer does Toronto depend on our waterways or our location along the shores of Lake Ontario.

Has Toronto’s international identity and place become tied up with a square pond?

At Union Station, walking east through its Great Hall into a rather bleak hallway, a visitor reaches a handful of temporary “walls” framed together with 2×4 studs and stabilized by cement blocks. This does not a glorious exhibition space make. Yet, this is where Jacob staged a powerful exhibition about place and relationship.

Wandering between the wooden frames, the rare maps, each of them an exquisite piece of workmanship, are paired with colour photos featuring the city of Toronto today. (One may wonder, Where else can one display such beautiful artifacts at a train station without the goods being stolen?)

Starting with a document dated 1677, the collection of maps demonstrates centuries of impact on the shoreline, the land, and its peoples. These maps show large bodies of water – Lake Ontario, the harbour, the Don river, the other Great Lakes and rivers that flow into them. They are glorious in their detail and the stories they tell about this place we now call the GTA.

In preparing for his show Jacob says he visited Laura Ten Eyck who is a dealer of rare maps. In his recent piece in Canadian Art, Jacob says, “Maps are narratives. They function as ‘organs of reality’ to the extent that they inform the ways in which we perceive the places they envision. And photographs are narratives too.”

Jacob pairs a 1929 map of the City of Toronto entitled “Plan ‘A’: Proposed New and Improved Through Streets” with a dead-end alley in today’s Chinatown. An antique map of York Harbour is displayed with a 2017 photo of the Leslie Street Split.

The View from Here offers commuters and Torontonians alike an excellent excuse to skip out of work a bit early to visit an exhibition that asks some important questions about our identity as a Great Lakes city and our sense of place.

Exhibition information: 

• Luis Jacob The View from Here
• Sept 21-Dec 1, 2019
• (near) Oak Room at Union Station
• Open daily 5:30 a.m. to 12:45 a.m.

This first article and my drawings on this topic appeared in the Anglican Journal supplement for the Ottawa region in summer 2025. My interest in native wildflowers is a big part of my herbal series as well as my Dandelion Collections Project.

Ottawa, Ontario

In a recent worship service at Trinity Anglican in Ottawa, Bishop Shane Parker in his homily highlighted the promises Anglicans make within the Baptismal Covenant. After making commitments to serve God and our neighbours, Anglicans are also asked “to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation, and respect, sustain and renew the life of the earth.”  Climate justice matters. And, luckily, gardening with plants that are indigenous to our region may be one way to respond to this baptismal promise.

I can’t think of a better way to be reassured of God’s generative goodness but to walk through a northern forest filled with spring flowers just as the leaves pop out. Across the Ottawa Valley, native plants demonstrate God’s goodness as our forest floors show off yellow trout lilies, mixed with tender violet hepaticas, and, a bit later, hundreds of trilliums. How many seasons does it take for a colony of white bunchberries to slowly spread along a nature trail? As the Creator declared long ago, “It is good.”

Although I’ve searched for Canadian wildflowers in their habitats for years, more recently, I’ve also started growing these plants in my own garden. Many Canadian gardeners are becoming more serious about cultivating plants that are indigenous to the region where they live. Local Anglican parishes such as Church of the Ascension in Ottawa are already actively planting these native gardens. (A local environmental organization maintains an interactive map of native plant gardens, and it includes churches across the region https://wildpollinators-pollinisateurssauvages.ca/pollinator-gardens/). Biologist generally use the terms “native” and “non-native” where non-native species have been introduced to Canada after European contact with Indigenous peoples.

Why does it make sense to grow native species in a Canadian garden? First and foremost, these plants belong here. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love planting annuals like orange marigolds. Probably, I will sneak some into my garden every year until my last breath. However, if our Creator had wanted marigolds to survive -20 C winter weather, I’m pretty sure They could have made that happen! As it is, marigolds die in autumn in Ottawa. Instead, we have been given butterfly weed. It’s a family member of the more familiar common milkweed and has survived harsh Canadian winters since time immemorial. Its complex flowers grow in bright orange clusters, which begs the question: “If we can splash bright orange throughout our gardens by planting butterfly weed, why not walk in step with what the Creator intends to grow right here in the first place?”

Karen McClure is a parishioner at St. Bartholomew Anglican, a master gardener in training, and a member of the congregation’s newly minted environmental committee. She says that native plants support local eco-systems, attract wildlife and enhance biodiversity.

“It’s a way that we as Christians can care for the earth,” she says. “It is a way to make a difference in one’s own backyard.” St. Bart’s has already planted serviceberry bushes in the church gardens and hopes to add more native plants this coming season.

Plants and its pollinators “grow up together” in an evolutionary sense over very long periods of time.

Biodiversity is threated by habitat loss, climate change and other factors. This in turn threatens the survival of pollinators such as butterflies and bees. These creatures are absolutely essential to the future of plants, and by extension, our own future as human beings.

Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Home Nature: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, defines a plant to be indigenous to a region when it “has evolved in a particular place long enough to be able to establish the specialized relationships that are nature.” He adds, “Most of the relationships between plants and animals are highly specialized, and they take a long time to develop.” When plants are moved around the world, like marigolds planted in Canada during summer, these special relationships are broken down.

“Local insects typically can’t eat these [non-native] plants and all the things that depend on those insects disappear as well, because there’s nothing generating those insects,” explains Tallamy. Thus, biodiversity is at risk.

Native plants can meet almost all of a gardener’s wishes. There are low plants (prairie smoke) and tall plants (Joe Pye weed). Gardeners with shady lots can try a shade-loving plant such as zig zag golden rod. And, pearly everlasting will bloom almost the entire season. New England asters, flat-topped asters and certain varieties of golden rods provide colour well into fall without spreading too aggressively.

So, for me, here’s the good news. First, anybody with a little garden, or even a flower box on a balcony, can support biodiversity and our planet by planting some native species.

It’s probably one of the easiest steps a gardener can take to truthfully answer to the baptismal vow, “I will, with God’s help.” Why not help fight climate change by doing what you already love to do? Plant some species that belong where you live. Churches can plant these native plants in flower borders and tell their neighbours that biodiversity matters!

Second, native plants can help us better understand God’s absolute delight in creating all of our world. His love for creation extends to even the coldest, darkest parts of our planet. He gave us butterfly weed and zig zag goldenrod! Nothing seems to speak louder than spring flowers in our northern climate: Joy will find a way. The Light will overcome darkness.

A note about Latin names

In her little book The Serviceberry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, author Robin Wall Kimmerer mentions that the serviceberry, known by the Latin name Amelancier alnifolium, has many other common names, including saskatoon, juneberry, shadbush, shadblow, sugarplum and sarvis. She adds, “Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance.” However, scientists use agreed-upon Latin names to ensure everybody studying plants is, in fact, referring to the same species. If shopping for native species be aware of plants that include pretty sounding names in brackets. For example, a species sold as Amelanchier Canadensis ‘Rainbow Pillar’ is a so-called nativar. It is derived from the native Serviceberry, but has been bred for a specific trait, such as height or other considerations. True native species never have a name that includes marketing idiom.

The Latin names of native species noted in this article in order of appearance:

Trout Lilies (Erythronium americanum), Hepatica (Anemone Americana), Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum), Bunchberries (Cornus canadensis), Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa), Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum), Purple Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum), Zig Zag Golden Rod (Solidago flexicaulis), Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea), New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), Flat-topped Aster (Doellingeria umbellate).

Resources

Johnson, Lorraine, and Colla, Sheila. A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators: Ontario and Great Lakes Edition. Douglas & McIntyre, 2022

Need some inspiration?

Plan a visit to Ascension Anglican Church on 253 Echo Drive in Ottawa. Their grounds demonstrate how native plants can create vibrant gardens. Many of the plants are identified with signs noting their common and scientific names.

Where to obtain native plants around Ottawa?

Many local gardening centres will carry some native species. The non-profit Fletcher Wildlife Garden https://ofnc.ca/programs/fletcher-wildlife-garden near The Central Experimental Farm organizes an annual native plant sale in spring. Plants can also be bought at some local farmers’ markets and ordered online from A Cultivated Art https://www.acultivatedart.com/native-plant-store

I met Karen Brodie years ago when she explained her vision to design and produce 14 large church banners within the tradition of the Stations of the Cross. She contacted me in late 2024 to let me know she has successfully launched execution of the project. Karen is still raising funds. She does beautiful work. Do check her out! www.brodiedesigns.com

Golden, BC

Sit, reflect and pray.

These are mandatory first steps Karen Brodie takes when designing liturgical art for St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Golden, B.C., where she worships.

Built in 1881 and surrounded by mountains, St. Paul’s small wooden building seems like an unlikely place to meet a modern fabric artist. Brodie’s works hang in churches and other buildings across North America and beyond.

Three years ago, the parish had to make the difficult decision to become a “worshipping congregation.” Now without a priest or a board, a liturgical artist may have been forgiven for finding a larger church home to find support for her practice.

Not Brodie. Moreover, the small worship committee at St. Paul’s had provided her with the inspiration to launch a massive project to design 14 banners depicting the Stations of the Cross.

“I didn’t think of it as a lifetime project,” she adds about launching the ambitious plan. “I had no sense of the scope. It was kind of a big idea.”

The Stations of the Cross, a long Christian tradition, depict up to 14 events during Holy Week. They include images such as Christ carrying the cross or being laid in the tomb.

“The traditional images re-enact the events, but don’t carry emotional weight,” says Brodie. “They are often inaccessible.”

For the past seven years, she has worked on designs that ask worshippers to move beyond memorizing the story line around Christ’s last days. Her banners intend to offer viewers a deep, personal faith journey.

Brodie asked 14 clergy to select one station each and write a reflection and a prayer. These writings guided her banner designs.

It was a hard slog, she says, to get the busy priests to participate. “I’d love to help, but I’m starting a sabbatical,” was one response she received. Another priest was diagnosed with cancer and had to delay participation.

Eventually, Brodie collected writings of seven men and seven women across a wide spectrum of theological perspectives and lifestyles. Liberal and conservative, gay and straight, newly ordained, experienced and retired clergy from urban or rural settings and from different denominations across North America and the U.K participated in the project. Among them was Archbishop John Privett, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and Yukon and bishop of the diocese of Kootenay, who provided writings on Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross.

“They remarkably find the common ground of the paschal mystery,” says Brodie.

Each Lent, for the last six years, Brodie makes a pact with herself to spend half an hour daily meditating on a reflection and putting “at least one line on paper.” Using watercolour pencil crayons, her sketches measure 13.5 x 11 inches and are designed to become fabric applique art measuring about 4 x 6 feet (1.25 x 2 metres), a scale sufficiently large to showcase intricate details.

“Every day, I had no idea what I was going to do,” she says. “I am not a figurative artist, so God really had to work with me to design the stations…In the case of Jesus being crucified, I went to my drawing pad, had to keep the lights off and my eyes half closed so that I could translate what was on my mind to the paper.”

The final designs mostly feature the figure of Jesus plus his cross. “My hope was to make Jesus as undefined by my own preconceptions as possible so that we all can come to see him as we need to see him,” says Brodie. “I didn’t want people to get stuck on what I had designed to prevent them from their contemplation of the subject at hand.”

Her stations are emotional, interpretive and generally quite colourful. “They hold a lot of life in them, even though the topic is death,” says Brodie. Although thoroughly modern, her work is immediately recognizable as liturgical art used to enrich worship. It is impeccably executed in rich colour palettes and a variety of fabrics. It can be challenging to obtain supplies since the closest fabric store is hundreds of kilometres away from Golden, B.C., and so Brodie relies on fabric swatches or just hopes colours she orders online match the materials that arrive in the mail.

After completing her 14 designs in 2015, Brodie is now showing the works and the accompanying meditations at different churches in B.C. She plans to eventually execute the designs in fabric.

The Rev. Anne Privett of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Kelowna, B.C., says an event last winter with the stations provided a fantastic devotional practice for her congregation.

“I wasn’t the only one in tears,” says Privett. “The way [Brodie] uses perspective and colour and her interpretation is very moving.” Brodie’s sense of vocation as an artist and the time she spends in prayer as she creates her designs are impressive, she adds. “Her work is a treasure.”

Meantime, Brodie says she cannot afford to execute the designs in fabric without being commissioned to do so. The next steps of the Stations of the Cross project are unknown, but she is hopeful she can keep the venture alive.

“I am trusting that God will direct a path for their completion,” says Brodie. In addition to executing the designs in fabric, she says the pieces could potentially be produced in a digital format for churches to use during worship (like songs are projected on overhead screens) or printed in various sizes for churches to display or use as handouts.

After finishing a degree in fashion design in Surrey, B.C., Brodie made her first banner for a church in Vancouver where she worked in youth ministry at the time.

“You can sew, right?” was the simple question a volunteer asked the young staffer when the congregation wanted to create a banner. It helped her launch her career as a full-time fabric artist at 21. She moved to Golden after marriage 15 years ago.

Meantime, St. Paul’s Anglican Church is moving onward and forward. “We changed the formula, and are finding some new life by meeting for prayer and fellowship at our homes,” says Brodie. She is also taking online courses to strengthen her theology and find a larger peer community. Readers can learn more about Brodie’s work on her website, www.brodiedesigns.com.

-Golden, BC. This article first appeared in the Anglican Journal in 2016.

This article first appeared in the Anglican Journal.

Edmonton, Alberta /Toronto, Ontario.

An Anglican liturgical ceremony rooted in Indigenous practices is building momentum within Anglican churches while slowly being introduced to other denominations across Canada.

The Standing Stones Ceremony guides worshippers through moments of purification, healing, prayer and thanksgiving. Worshippers smell sweet grass, see smoke, listen to drums, move rocks, share wisdom stories, joys and sorrows, break bread together and receive a blessing. The ceremony is not performed in pews. Rather, it must be experienced in a circle to honour Indigenous traditions.

After a two-year listening campaign among Indigenous Anglicans launched almost a decade ago, Standing Stones was developed in collaboration with Indigenous leaders by Travis Enright, archdeacon for Indigenous ministries, diocese of Edmonton. Enright is a member of the James Smith Cree First Nation in Melfort, Sask.

It took years of trial and error to refine the ceremony, says Enright. But now he is introducing Standing Stones to Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics, and Pentecostals. Often, small tweaks need to be made to fit different denominational contexts. Also, it can be challenging to deliver a ritual in a circle inside a square church building. “How can we make it work in those traditional church architectures?” he asks.

Participants in Standing Stones learn that it’s possible to worship Jesus Christ with a different lens, not just the European lens, says Enright. The ceremony intends to help Indigenous Christians find healing as they are in recovery from injustices suffered in the wake of the Sixties Scoop and residential schools.

“This is a Christian service that isn’t colonial,” he says. “The ceremony is an act of restoration to help Indigenous worshippers find healing for themselves and for their churches.

“The Anglican church has always believed the word of God should be delivered in the vernacular and be ‘in-culturated’ [to make it accessible],” he says.

Enright adds that the ceremony gives a tool to help the churches become agents of reconciliation within their own denominational contexts.

The Rev. Harold Roscher, a chaplain within the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC), recently guided participants through Standing Stones at a social justice conference in Toronto, entitled For Such a Time as This: Justice Meets Worship and the Arts.  The one-day conference was organized by the CRC’s Centre for Public Dialogue, based in Ottawa, and brought together about 75 artists, musicians and social justice workers from across Canada for mutual support and learning.

Also based in Edmonton, Roscher initially collaborated with Enright to develop the ceremony and is now one of its ambassadors, spreading its introduction beyond Anglican circles.

“When was the last time you prayed for an hour?” Roscher likes to ask skeptics who question the legitimacy of integrating Christian worship with Indigenous practices. The sweat lodge ceremony, a spiritual cleansing rite, asks participants to complete four lengthy rounds of prayer, he adds.

Christina DeVries, a member of the CRC from Waterdown, Ont., and chair of CRC’s Canadian Aboriginal Ministry committee, was one of about 12 men and women who participated in the ceremony in a small basement room. It was an amazing gift to learn some traditional Indigenous knowledge and put it into worship, she said. DeVries said participating in the ceremony allowed her to expand her relationship with God. She added that sometimes we think worship needs to look a specific way, but it is possible to expand our thinking.

At the justice conference, Nicole Vandenberg, also a member of the CRC from Georgetown, Ont., said the Standing Stones ceremony was “life-giving.” She added that the experience reminded her that her own faith tradition was just one flavour of Christian expression. The core of our faith is the same, she said, even if the detailed ways in which we express it may be different.

Roscher, a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, says he hopes participation in the ceremony will be educational as well as worshipful. “I read the Bible through a Cree lens,” he says, adding that Canadian Christians can learn from Indigenous wisdom and traditions.

“I don’t expect people to fix issues I may experience as a Cree person,” says Roscher, “but I want them to come alongside me as they grow their understanding of injustices suffered by First Nations Peoples.”

Indigenous Ministries of the Anglican Church of Canada supports the Indigenous Peoples of Canada (First Nations, Inuit and Métis), strives for reconciliation with the Anglican Communion and works toward Indigenous self-determination. More information about the Standing Stones ceremony can be obtained by contacting the Edmonton diocese office at churched@edmonton.anglican.ca

-Toronto, October 2017

While in South Africa for annual meetings of Oikocredit, a microfinancing organization, I wrote some articles for the Anglican Journal in Canada.

Johannesburg, South Africa
Dominated by a handful of major banks, South Africa’s advanced financial system allows any foreign visitor with a debit card instant access to cash at ATMs everywhere. Unfortunately, this first-class banking system is mostly inaccessible to millions of South Africans who live in deep poverty in squatter camps or informal settlements around the country. Officially, national unemployment hovers around 25 per cent, but actual figures are estimated to be much higher. Surprisingly, even teachers, nurses, and other civil servants with full-time jobs barely qualify for basic banking services. For example, teachers at state-run schools may earn the equivalent of about $1,000 a month while a janitor in the public sector struggles to survive on less than half this salary, The Star in Johannesburg reported recently as civic servants walked off the job in country-wide strikes to demand better pay. Meantime, major banks such as ABSA and First National Bank expect a customer to earn the equivalent of about $10,000 to $20,000 in gross annual income before offering basic services such as a chequing account. The dilemma: How to cash a pay cheque or government allowances if you are one of South Africa’s “unbankable” citizens? Many cash their cheques at grocery stores, obtain payroll cash loans at double-digit interest rates or depend on friends to access financial services. This informal sector, dominated by loan sharks and mostly unregulated, is widely referred to as “microfinance.”Although the South African government has now taken steps to regulate this informal financial sector, “microfinance” has a history of failure and has gained a bad reputation in the country. “The commercial banks are strong here, but they are not reaching around 13 million poor South Africans,” says Patrick Mabuela of Oikocredit in Johannesburg. Oikocredit is a worldwide organization that has pioneered microfinance for over 30 years. Notwithstanding its unique context, Oikocredit is providing capital to local microfinance institutions that wish to improve the lives of the poor. Providing credit is now recognized as a powerful tool for eradicating poverty.

“Pray for peace and harmony in South Africa,” urges Mr. Mabuela, a life-long Anglican who believes in helping those who cannot help themselves because they do not have access to financial services.

This article first appeared in the Anglican Journal in July 2007.