Artist: Jennah Barry
Hometown: Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia
Song: “Pink Grey Blue”
Album: Holiday
Release Date: March 27, 2020
Label: Forward Music Group
In Their Words: “‘Pink Grey Blue’ is about my deep and lasting body dysmorphia. The song speaks from the perspective of a voice in my head trying to convince me to look at myself with gentle eyes.” — Jennah Barry
Photo credit: Kira Curtis
Artist: Natalie MacMaster
Hometown: Troy, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; currently the tiny village of Douro, Ontario.
Song: “West Bay Road”
Album: Sketches
Release Date: November 1, 2019
Label: Linus Entertainment
In Their Words: “‘West Bay Road’ starts with an O’Carolan piece, a famous Irish composer. Then followed by a tune written for a good family friend who was battling cancer at the time of the recording. He unfortunately didn’t make it and has passed on since, but he got to hear his jig before he died. It will always be a special tune for me.” — Natalie MacMaster
Photo credit: Rebekah Littlejohn
The following is the final video in a four-part series hosted in partnership with and created by Breakwater Studios. Each piece is part of a larger series, Life’s Work: Six Conversations with Makers, that chronicles the lives and artistic pursuits of makers living on Canada’s Eastern seaboard.
“Turns,” featuring Steven Kennard of Canning, Nova Scotia
When did you first begin working on your craft?
It’s been kind of always, really. I don’t really so much remember a beginning at all. I guess, if you really want to date it, it’s been [since] about 1974 or 1975. As a turner, I’ve always been immersed in woodworking in one way or another from childhood, really. I was excited to beginning turning, to make pieces for furniture which is what I started out doing.
Do you have another profession? If so, what do you do? If not, what did you do prior to beginning your artistic work?
I was a musician, prior to everything. I mean, I had been sharing my time as a turner with being a photographer. I still do it, but more emphasis has been on turning now. I was a musician back in the ’70s, so woodworking became a part of that because I made a lot of stage props and things at the time. English folk music. Button accordion.
How long did it take you to master? What new skills did you have to learn?
That’s a tricky one. I’m not sure that you ever really … it depends whether you decide you’ve become a master or not. I never really feel I’ve ever got there, actually. As far as learning new skills, it wasn’t just a case of, “Oh yeah, I’ve gotta do this, this, and this.” It was a case of acquiring skills over a period of time, you know, making the usual mistakes. It wasn’t like I went off to school or did a course or anything like that because, in those days, there really was no such thing available anyway. It’s a continual growth. There are always aspects of it that you really still feel like you can improve on, I suppose. It’s an accumulation of skills built up over, really, a lifetime, to be fair.
What do you feel you contribute to your community with the pieces you create?
Very little, actually. I’d like to think it was different, but if you look at the community as a worldwide community of woodturners, then I think I’ve made a contribution with my work for sure. I know that I’ve influenced a lot of people’s direction in what they’re doing, but as far as I would imagine, there are very few people that even know that I’m here. It’s really an artistic community rather than a community in Nova Scotia. It’s just too far out in nowhere, if you know what I mean. Culturally, it’s quite different from being in a bigger, larger city or whatever. Population’s low, agricultural-type community where art doesn’t really figure in most people’s lives. As a result of the Turns movie, it really opened up a community to me in a way. A lot of people related to that story.
What have you learned about yourself as you’ve grown as an artist?
There’s never an end to it; there’s always something else you want to go on to. I’ve learned a level of patience, I imagine. And knowing that it’s really a case of practice, practice, practice. Keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it. You know, it’s not really one of those things you can just jump in and jump out, really. Obviously, not everything turns out the way you want it to be, but being adaptable, as well, to see all possibilities in a situation. Maybe a thing didn’t work out, or how you find a way around a problem, as well. Problem-solving is a good answer to that, in a way. Constantly trying to work its way through the process by solving problems.
The following is the second in a four-part video series hosted in partnership with and created by Breakwater Studios. Each piece is part of a larger series, Life’s Work: Six Conversations with Makers, that chronicles the lives and artistic pursuits of makers living on Canada’s Eastern seaboard. Look for a new video each Tuesday.
“Stone,” featuring Heather Lawson of Bass River, Nova Scotia
When did you first begin working on your craft?
When I was 24 — so that would be almost 32 years. Oh my God. Getting old.
Do you have another profession? If so, what do you do? If not, what did you do prior to beginning your artistic work?
All I do is beat on rocks. Before I did that, I studied recreation and I was a director of a boys and girls club. I loved it. It was as far as I could go by the time I was 24.
How long did it take you to master? What new skills did you have to learn?
Well, I wouldn’t say I mastered. In the stone craft, to become a master, there are actually things you have to do. It’s your peers who tell you you are a master. You don’t decide that yourself, and you have to have taught, and you have to have successfully run your own business to be a master, as far as stone masons are concerned. I know people who have never done any of those things and they call themselves a master. It’s more, nowadays, if you’ve been here long enough, you can call yourself a master.
As far as mastering your craft, I will never master this craft. There is way too much to it. You could cut every single day of your life and never have experienced it at all.
With stone stuff, especially, because there are so many different things. If you go away from the artistic part, the sculptural part, and you get into the stone masonry part, as far as making, like, cathedral windows, I’ve done that but not all stonemasons are good enough to do that. They are very difficult. Or to do a spiral staircase: You may not, in your whole career, get to do that. It’s not so much the cutting; it’s being able to figure out how to do it. How to set it out. It’s the setting out. The geometrics of it all.
What do you feel you contribute to your community with the pieces you create?
I was going to say my community couldn’t care less. I’ve brought notice to the craft in my community, as far as enriching my community, and I’ve inspired people to pick it up as a hobby craft. Actually, when I do my workshops, it’s pretty much 50/50 [in terms of women]. There are two women that I know of who do it more than a hobby. They work away at it, and I just got an email from a gentleman who took my course twice now, and he sent me pictures of his work and he’s really coming along. And now he wants to learn how to do lettering and I suggested he take my next workshop. [Laughs]
It’s great seeing someone progress like that. Takes me back to my boys club days. Same idea where, back then, you got to share enthusiasm with youth and, here, I get to share the enthusiasm of adults. It’s the same thing; it’s identical. They don’t squeal as much.
What have you learned about yourself as you’ve grown as an artist?
That I still have lots to learn. It’s frustrating when you want to do something, but you still haven’t got the skills to make your hands do what your head is thinking. I could make the same stuff over and over again and get really good at it, but I would be bored out of my mind. I have ideas and I have absolutely no skills to do them because I do work now that has stuff besides stone in them. So trying to figure out how to put the two together or how to make the stone do what I want it to do is challenging, but that’s why I keep doing it. I’d be bored out of my mind if it was the same thing every day.
