a bit of margaret atwood, some bronze tiles

Hmm, this might have to be rebranded as a name-dropper's blog. Sorry.

The town of Richmond Hill, Ontario built a new park, themed to Margaret Atwood's book Alias Grace. 

They wanted to include a series of 6" bronze tiles, to be set into stone features. I submitted 12 sketches to represent various items mentioned in the book. 

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So, my father used to work for Margaret Atwood's father. I grew up like Ms Atwood. My dad was an entomologist too, though not an academic. He as a farm boy with a PhD. For my first 5 summers we travelled to join my dad in south-central British Columbia where he monitored his test plots, part of his job researching biological control. We lived in old log cabins, and played in junkyards, perfect for little kids.

My dad didn't especially care for Dr. Atwood's taste in cars. My dad was a big Detroit guy, and Atwood was a Volvo man. I suspect this coloured my dad's whole view of his short career at University of Toronto in the middle '60s. Biology was his work, cars his thoracic exoskeleton. 

Still, my Mom was proud of this tenuous connection to Margaret, inspiring me to read everything Atwood for some years. I was a great fan of her early, more biographical work, losing interest when she ventured into the speculative fiction genre, not my thing. 

6" bronze tile: Beets

When this bronze tile project came along, I was happy to get involved, happy well beyond just getting another project. Margaret was practically family, according to my Mom.

Needle and thread. I'll have to re-read this book to find those references.

Some of the subjects were a bit dodgy, it seemed.  Peony? Potatoes? Beets? Well, I thought the beets came off pretty well. Not the potatoes. Modelled  the potatoes, cast, finished, shipped, while singing a happy tune for distraction.

Not going to show the potatoes. Sorry.

I did model these in clay, with some 'looseness', a rare event, as most of my customers are looking for some precision in their work. These got cast and polished and shipped. Like most projects, I'm done at that point. it's rare to see the final work installed, even if it's as close as Richmond Hill. I guess I'm just on to the next thing.

There are lots of great bronze tiles out there. For a blurry moment I considered designing a 'product'. But I have a long and semi-lustrous career of producing products that beg to be ignored. There seems to be lots of custom work out there, and it's fun to do.

I sort of dreamed for some years of approaching Margaret Atwood at a writers festival and introducing myself, you know, as distantly related. As I get older, more mature, even, that distance fades far into the haze.

 I can just see Ms. Atwood giving me that freezing fish eye, raising an eyebrow and turning away, leaving my smile to melt like a smear of chocolate on a sunny wall. No thanks. I can get people who really love me to do that for free.