I’m here at the swanky 9th, it’s 5 a.m., Saturday morning, February 25th, outside it’s minus 16. I just woke up from this strange dream that was weirdly, cut short…
In the dream: I’m driving dad’s 1968 Plymouth Fury station wagon with the wood side paneling. On top is a huge white canoe tied on. I can see the bow of the canoe reaching out over the hood of this huge station wagon and the canoe, yes, white, seems to be made of puffy white clouds. I’m driving slowly through the city streets and entering a parking area that is clearly the front entrance of a flashy hotel. It’s day time but the buildings are tall and so the light down by the main entrance isn’t in a blaze of sunshine. Out front is a well dressed native man, about 40, clean and sober, as brown as me, and wearing some very long and thick black braids, 2 of them, hanging down the front of his jacket, down to near his waist, and he’s slim. He was wearing a burgundy shirt, black jacket, brown skinned, black hair, and in some kind of a snit about something. With him is an older man, older than me, also native, also very brown, also with very long braids, but filled with grey hair, and he is clearly trying to talk some sense into the younger man. I see the younger man through the windshield of this mega station wagon as I roll up slowly and stop in front of him. He’s off to the right side of the vehicle and I can see him looking in awe at this monster of a classic set of wheels and he’s looking at the massive canoe I have tied on top. Then he looks back at me: clearly an Indian, driving this classic automobile, huge canoe on top, what is the story? And I can see he’s still a bit upset about something, none of my business, but I tell him anyway: Why don’t you settle down?
First painting of the year! 36×48 inches, acrylic on canvas, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook. Actually this piece is at the 98% finished point in this photo. A few more splashes of paint have been added, but it is good to go! DM if you would like to purchase this painting.
Painting No. 2 for the year, is still on the operating table. It’s “Moon Boy No. 3”, 36×48 inches, acrylic on canvas, and hopefully ready to show later this week!
While waiting for paint to dry we’re going back to work on this project:
We’re still working out a book title for this one but more importantly, we’re back to finishing what was written in February 2022. If all goes well this should be ready for April Fool’s Day! Ha!
I was back in Ottawa last week making some in school presentations and let me tell you: live and on the floor, in with the students, is much better than an online presentation! You can have a lot of fun with a live show and my art classes are always about a lot of fun! Had a chance while I was over there, to stay at “the old apartment”. My buddy Jasmine Moon, she’s taken over the address but the view remains the same. And of course when I was over there, a war whooping snow storm had to roll through.
We’re back on the open range and it seems at every turn there is something to see and hear out here! Check out this live show, this morning at around 10. We usually hear them at night in the summer time so this was a first for me!
Wow! Here we are! And so far, so good. Safe. All of us.
Part of the display at the Toronto Native Friendship Centre Xmas sale, 2 weekends worth, at the end of November and early December! We had a great time and it was awesome to see some old friends once again! Some of them, not since 1982…
Our line of Xmas cards made just for the event! They sure didn’t last long! We’re sold out!
Xmas once again, on the swanky 9th, cosy and warm and out of the wilds that rolled in on us on December 23rd!
Every so often I was able to get home to the range and that is a complete 180 from what’s going on down south! Up there, with no light or noise pollution, you can create a very slick looking display using candles only! Here is our display in the south west corner of the living room on December 17th! Beautiful artwork, some of it created at the Ravenseyrie Studio and Art Gallery, Gore Bay, Ontario, Canada.
A beautiful winter mid morning on the range, December 18, 2022. Not a lot of tracks these days with the empty nest…
Driving on the 407 east bound, heading to the Via Rail Station in Oshawa, on the night of December 23, 2022. It was one of those snow storms that made the news!
Rolling up on the Via Station, thinking the train was going to arrive at 645 p.m.!
At the Via Rail Station in Ottawa, around 10 p.m. Wow! Even the train had a tough go in this weather which… Makes no sense to me but anyway, the train was late 4 hours! Our old buddy Jasmine Moon though was in good spirits and order and ready for some xmas cheer at the swanky 9.
Calm and at peace on New Year’s Day 2023. A mild spell rolled through and that wallop of snow we had on the 23rd was pretty much gone by January 1. No wind on the range in winter makes for some easy going!
Okay! So we’re off to a brand new year! And we have a few new ideas for the painting department! As soon as I’m back up there we’re cracking open the big 36×48″ canvas! And we have some fun ideas swimming about in the writing department! So stay tuned! More to come!
the willow in the front yard back home, on November 8th. seems like ages ago now. back in those days, Tuesday of last week, we were on “full moon watch”! well worth the wait.
and there she is! morning of November 10. the moon. the empty nest. the willow tree. the lawn full of goat poop. paintings on the table in there, waiting for the finishing touch!
the only traffic we see or hear out here! not a bad way to go if you’re into that sort of thing. which I certainly am!
at the McMichael Collection once again! always worth a look on a free Saturday afternoon. free to us I mean. the gallery wants ten bucks from each of us to get in, which isn’t a lot considering what they have to see in there. this beauty: a Jean Paul Lemieux from 1961: Solstice D’Hiver, oil on canvas, just one of many worth a half hour look. they have a J.P. over at the Varley Gallery in Unionville and I had a chance to give it a serious look, 5 years ago. same composition and spooky background! without knowing J.P.’s work, I did something similar to this, back in art school, autumn of 1985.
so hey! I’m in this show at the native friendship centre in Toronto on November 25th to the 28th! maybe I’ll see you!
I’m in Markham this afternoon, Monday, November 14th, looking at some new ideas, fresh sketches on 184 pound paper, 11×14 inches, 15 sheets in all, and maybe an idea we can work with in the very near future. how would you know if never tried?
it’s a new word around the camp fire and i’m researching with much interest! of course there are the usual suspects at the top of the list: Joseph Boyden, Michelle Latimer, and recently, Carrie Bourassa, all 3 of them falling pretty close to the roots of the Grey Owl tree.
truth be told i was surprised to see this man’s name make the list! Dr. Thom Alcoze was a top dog at the U of S when i befuddled my way through their Native Studies Program as a spritely 22 year old, many moons ago! is it true? is Dr. Thom Alcoze a fake Indian?
here is where i saw the news:
not a lot of followers! May 2021 isn’t that long ago. btw: that is famed pretendian Michelle Latimer in the profile photo. she was the Christmas story of 2020. Joe was the Christmas story of 2016. i like how she’s wearing that big old Indian fringe jacket! if she had those sleeves rolled up you’d see those big old Indian tattoos too! just like Joe!
here is the other fake indians bit i’m following. Geoff and Jorge are writing up some pretty decent stories on the subject and i thank them both for their reporting. quite a few more followers on this site! and a few names too, that i’ve seen around the Ottawa area over the past five years. like this one:
i haven’t visited her gallery in quite a few years but the last time i was in there, it appeared she’d hit the pay dirt! the fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, she does nice work! fake indian or whatever.
as for this real indian, we’ll just have to keep our rooms warm through winter and carry on with the research, keeping our fringes crossed that we don’t make the Pretendians List! (ha ha!)
Update: November 12, 2022: I’m always on the look out for said creature: the Pretendian! To meet a real one in modern times.
I’m just now though getting wise to Sacheen Littlefeather, who played that bit at the Academy Awards in 1972! Alas! More and continued research is in store!
as some of you may know: ages ago i was in an amazing all native rock and roll band. we grew out of the drama team at the N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre over there in Sudbury, Ontario. ah but those were some glorious and exciting times!
on stage at the Northern Lights Folk Festival (ages ago!)
the band was called No Reservations and gosh they were a wild bunch! some day we need to write a book about that one.
and so around that time, i bought a Fostex brand 4 track recorder which used basic cassette tapes. i’d plug a cassette in there and use those 4 tracks to try and make something song wise i could take to the band. of course we had that Fostex sitting around at the party house too and some mighty weird songs were recorded on there including the infamous: What to do with Sunday Afternoon… (also on my Youtube channel, warning: coarse language and sexual content in that song!)
anyway: the Fostex and all those original tapes lay buried in a plastic bin back home on the range, for who knows how long. about 5 years ago someone who knows how to transfer these old analog tapes to digital went to work on a few of them and we ended up with some snap shots of the past, which we still need to make videos for and post them to the twinravens youtube channel. for kicks you see!
recently though i was given a gizmo that connects a guitar into a computer to record on Garage Band. this thing is an Apogee brand “jam” connector. the line in is the 1/4 inch jack and the line out is this magic whatever it is that turns your guitar into a digital. but instead of plugging the quarter inch line in jack from the guitar i plugged the far end into this Fostex and boom: we can hear all these old tapes once again but this time on computer. super fun stuff especially as some of this “insane and abstract” music hasn’t seen the light of day since 1995. like: The Shadow of You. (yikes! what a song!)
anyway. i haven’t got the details sound wise figured out: how to mix these four tracks into the digital without a lot of back ground noise, buzz, and all that crap that goes with a jangle of wires all over the table top. and i’m no ACE when it comes to using Garage Band! i’m still trying to figure that one out!
but here is Love Song Number 6 for you! fussed with last night to the tune of a half a dozen beers, a lot of wiggling and waggling of wires and yes the mix is very muddy, but this is our first run at reviving these old tapes and putting them on the youtube air.
Fostex analog to Garage Band digital, first attempt.
i think i wrote and recorded this in 1994 when the band was starting up and really getting going. we were a rock and roll band so this song definitely didn’t make the set list.
i put this cheesy video together last night after fussing for several hours with the sound and those measly 4 tracks! (gosh the business of recording sound, songs and so on is time consuming! best not to be consuming a half dozen beers along the way… (we’ll try it again on the sober straight and narrow very soon!)) the drawings in the video come from that time! those are drawings of mine from a sketch book dated 1994/1995. you’ll even see the famed Stacie from Malibu in there! gosh she was a thunderbolt!
anyway! there it is! my first attempt to revive these old songs of mine that never made the No Rez set list or album list. i had a lot of fun trying to figure this out last night and yes, those tasty German beers can become a diversion in the process but you have to remember last night it was a blistering 30 C plus! up here on the 3rd floor it was smoking hot! we were down to our bikinis!
Me and Shag going to work in No Reservations
ah but the music business was fun and how i would love to get back into it. but a fella like me needs a band and right now my band is working other irons in other fires.
the glass ain’t half empty/full, its BONE DRY!
you see in the band i was never one of the vocalists. we had 3 good singers up front and that is where they’re supposed to be! a voice like mine just couldn’t run in that race but i was mighty happy to be in there on one of the guitars.
here is what the band really sounds like, with all the bells and whistles of a fancy studio production:
Nice work!
so i’ll go back to work on those old cassette tapes and see what we can scrounge up in the lost songs/Fostex dept. (might be best to start the project in the morning minus the German pilsners! ha!)
and that’s the story behind: Love Song Number 6. words and music by Mark Seabrook. artwork too, drawn over the fun times of 1994 and 1995. what art fun!
update: November 8, 2022: full moon is on the rise, very far north on the tree line to the east, out here on the open range. no wind on a night like this means sweet and wonderful beauty! the landscape is at peace which means we can be too! wonderful way to spend a Tuesday night! anyway: I wanted to re share this classic twinravens song with you. I hope you like it!
A beautiful sunrise on the Range, Friday morning, Manitoulin Island, Canada. It was the beginning of a stretch of very warm and beautiful climes, wonderful this time of year. The last time it was like this, it was 2015 and I remember it well! It was just me and my Jasmine Moon on the Range back in that early November 2015. What a lucky man I was to be able to walk her to the school bus every morning.
Sunrise as seen from the swanky 9th, Saturday morning! Hey! We’re maxing out these days and it’s good! Some rest time is good as well but we do that when we get home. When I got home from that Ottawa road trip, oh boy… This willful Indigenous artist was running on fumes. But we’re good now, after a few days of light duty. And the visiting of a fellow artist at her studio, her room with a view!
Silver Lake on Manitoulin Island: on the road to Sheshegwaning, Thursday afternoon. It was along the way when I stopped to visit my artist friend.
I always thought the 3rd floor of this place on Queen Street West would make a cool city address. Mind you it would have to be the entire floor for it to work!
This place on Queen Street West doesn’t have what I’m looking for, ha ha. Saturday, November 5th was a beautiful day weather wise and perfect cruising down the streets!
Let’s remember this one. And so after a day of walking and snooping it was back to the swanky 9th for a glass and truth be told I got to wonder where we’re off to anymore…
An Anishnabe in Quebec, c. 2005: alone in the wilds. I’ve made a few bad business decisions in the past and going to this place and staying as long as we did, was one of them! At the very least, we got a few fun photos out of it! This was back in the day when I still used my Nikon F2 and for this shot it was outfitted with a 16 mm Nikkor lens. If I could go back I’d tell that young lad: go home to your family and stay there with them. What a fool. Thinking he could make a difference.
Anyway. As my niece said to me on Saturday: enjoy another trip around the sun! Beautiful sunrise in progress here on the swanky 9th: a clear sky and the light of a new day working its way up into last night.
ha! i say that jokingly! because i’m out here on the range, going on 21 days now without a note of art conversation, idea expressed verbally, or hint of a hand to hold while under the mighty Milky Way. she’s new moon boys. and so, alone under the almighty, with eagles roosting down by the river (what music they make first thing in the morning!) and the great wide open: there is room to stretch the “art making arms”. we have some good looking pieces but we’re also getting down to the bottom of the paint barrels.
so last night around 7 i stowed the gear, set a table for one, lit a candle, cracked open a Paul Jaboulet Aine Cornas Domaine de Saint Pierre (2012), sparked up the youtube for a little dinner music and instead got attracted to a documentary about alien abductions. i watched the nutty scenes, heard the kook house stories, heard the so called experts blabbering on about all this stars and moon and space stuff and… well the truth is i didn’t know if it was the creep show scenes they were mustering in the doc (the greys were coming out of a bright white light), the gacked out music on the doc soundtrack, the fancy French Rhone, or the 21 days alone at sea, but somehow that alien abduction jazz started rattling my rusty cage!
i put my knife and fork down and looked out the jumbo windows which face the east, they were wide flipping open of course, and kind of wondered if there was anything out there. the pooch was sitting at attention, head up, ears tuned into something going on out there to the north east. you have to remember: out here in the boons, there is no light pollution, no noise pollution, no neighbours, and a whole lot of SFA once the lights go out. SFA i mean if your jiggly mind doesn’t start playing tricks.
of course we have this guy, Roger, in the house. Shell brought him in from Ottawa and so here he is, in the house, staring at yours truly, Travis Walton wannabe/Little Boy Blue, alone at his dining table…
well 21 day days alone… (see what i mean?), nights too, might cause a fuss when you’re sailing across the universe. slip that stupid documentary with the spook house scenes in there and you’re cooking with gas. so i booted up my Facebook and wrote a farewell message to the world, going on about this alien abduction thing and told them i was tired of hiding behind the couch with my bottle of french vin and was going to scurry off to bed, like Yoda in his death scene.
i got up to my room with a view and saw this guy staring at me!!!
“An Ojibwe in Quebec: A Self Portrait on June 14th”, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 22×28 inches. Morgan H. Collection. (We’re holding onto it for now.)
so by this point in time i’m about ready to soil my drawers. i thought a little night music might help ease the creeps and me into la la land so i hit the random button on the remote and on came this:
(note the house on the open range and the one tree… )(looking kind of like a place we sort of know… )
my crib, on the open range…
sunrise on the range, Sept. 21. the last full day of summer…
and so! i made it through the night. i did NOT get abducted by aliens, at least not that i can remember, Roger is still over there gawking at me, and “A Self Portrait on June 14th” is still in the collection here, on hold. i thought i’d jump in the car and take a little ride into the city and see the madness first hand, up close, where i could catch a whiff, and maybe dust off the cobwebs that will surely develop after 21 days alone at sea, but a cooler and calmer mind at the other end of a long distance phone call this morning put those plans on ice.
and so it is back to the brushes, here, deep in Indian Summer, safe and sound back on earth.
(kind of peculiar how things work themselves out… we’re in it now: the empty nest… and i’m back where i started: on the range, alone, in sweet and beautiful Indian Summer. outside there is a blaze of sun, it’s Sept. 17th, 2021, 25 C at 4 p.m., Friday night, no kids in the house. it’s just me and Roger. even the pooch is gone. cats are all gone. mice are moving in. but in this paradise, river running slow, lawn mowed to golf green, eagles singing down by the river, blank canvasses on the table, acrylic paint at the ready, brushes too, and a sky filled with stars in a few short hours, an artist can get along. we’re in a room with a view and… i must tell you: the other day, in the afternoon, while out here alone i saw something big moving across the east field. it was bigger than a coyote and i wondered about someone’s pooch out on the prowl, but this thing was bigger than a pooch! i grabbed the binoculars and zoomed in to see it HAD to be a wolf. if i had to guess, about 250 yards away, meandering across the field going south to north, and BIG! so i yelled at it and waved but it didn’t acknowledge me, unlike the eagles. that big wolf just kept going, in no hurry, north across the east field, over the fence and into the almighty out back. it’s only the second time i’ve seen a wolf. i asked the locals up at the general store if there had been any word about any wolves running and she said this place is full of wolves. yikes. so back in Sept. 2017 when poochie was sitting here looking out to the night, everything super quiet, pitch black, the two of us on our own, me with my splashy Paul Jaboulet and a fancy glass and poochie with her ears up and tuned into something moving out there in the darkness, just to the north east of us, maybe?
anyway. we don’t have any splashy Paul Jaboulet today nor do we have poochie, or the cats, or the kids or anything else. what we have is the great wide open and some beautiful climes and the night… well we’ll just see about that Orion up there at some point in time. and Nokomis too, maybe watch her set. to the tune of some Chet Baker and whatever pilsners these fine folks can deliver, up there at the local. if it IS Indian Summer, bring it on. i’d be saying: Nice to see you old friend.)
Update: November 4, 2022: Thank the almighty and a lot of other things that we’re still here! No need to mow the lawn as the neighbour’s goats come over and mow it for me. Started the day over there, shirt sleeve weather, but tonight we’re back on the swanky 9th, going downtown to pick up a package first thing in the morning. 2017… My how times change, how folks come and go, and how SOME! Remain! After all these years. Very cool. And I am thankful for those who stayed with me. Miigwetch! Many thanks. (Moon is high and bright at 9 p.m. Soon we’ll put 56 to bed and go onto the next if all goes well!)
Beauty afternoon for it, Saturday, October 22, 2022: Indian summer in the city! On the agenda: the latest Kent Monkman thing. We’ve been here and there checking out his work: at the MET when they opened his 2 jumbo pictures in the grand gathering space way back when, and even walking through his studio when it was on Stirling in Toronto, way back further when. Neither of us had been to the ROM in years so we thought okay, let’s go have a look.
What the Globe is saying about it.
Swanky entrance, in Cree, English and French!
That’s the first one you see and let me tell you there is a lot going on in that picture!
Oh my goodness the things you see at the Royal Ontario Museum on a Saturday afternoon!
Super heavy. I can relate being a dad. Now in the empty nest, it is the way of it. But I can not imagine the horror of it, say, if she were in grade 2 and it happened.
But I have been through it myself. Taken away while in kindergarten and put through a journey of hell on earth, true madness and the ultimate in ugliness. But in my experience, my parents didn’t want me anyway.
So we’ll have to work on that one a little more.
“Eddie and Buzz”, flash urban photography by Mark Seabrook, October 22, 2022. I doctored it up with the MacBook photo tools. We were walking to the onsite bar for a splash and saw this huge eagle behind glass and of course that jumbo brontosaurus or whatever it is, in back and I though, what a kooky picture that is!
It was an interesting show. Not sure if it was worth the 50 bucks it cost for the 2 of us to get in but maybe if we made a day of it things would have been different.
On the way in to see one of his shows in a long ago summer time, Toronto, East end. That one was free!
At his studio on Stirling, many moons ago! (That studio space and the party going there was very cool!)
February 25, 2023
twinravens
twinravens 