"Come in, come in,” invites Kristeen Verge, waving me into her Nanaimo studio with the wet end of a loaded paintbrush. "I’m doing a red wash,” she divulges, grinning while she brandishes the brush over a large canvas; the maestro playing with music. It’s magic. Vivid, dynamic, semi-abstract tulips rise from the acrylics like bold […]
Author Archives: Janelle Hoddevik
A Man for the Mountain
What does it really mean to give back? Is it just the return of something we’ve borrowed and used, and now no longer need? Like, "thanks, Mom, here’s your Kleenex back.” Or, is it more – the repayment of a debt or obligation requiring some gift or action of equivalent value? "Wow, you shovelled that […]
Re-Greening
Unless your name is Tarzan, your home is probably not very Green. Granted, Tarzan’s was a particular lifestyle choice, and he spent much of his time swinging from vines. So, a natural flooring of the decomposing jungle kind, and non-existent walls suffused in multi-coloured light by a radiant sun with plenty of open air conditioning […]
About Love (written in 1976)
Mine was an exception. I thought it was the rule, but my naiveté has grown older along with me, and now I know. Home was where my Mother was. My father too, of course, but she was there when we burst in and dragged in from school. Her "hello" was a greeting of her love. […]
Weaving the Words
"The way Grandpa taught us,” Ellen White begins, gently tapping her forehead, "he always said, ‘What is the thought before it becomes IN you’? And that means, what you think, you will create.” Dark-haired and petite, she radiates both a peaceful calm and a bubbling energy as she sits comfortably at her kitchen table. Slipping […]