Author Archives: Catherine Tammaro

Zari: Celebrated Canadian Trio’s Songs of Georgia

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Georgian culture is ancient, dating back to at least the 7th century BCE. “Sakartvelo,” the Georgian word for Georgia, is a small country located on The Black Sea, containing many provinces with diverse picturesque landscapes. From the magnificent snow-tipped Caucasian Mountains to its lush fields and valleys,  Georgia contains subtropical deserts, as well as alpine zones. A gateway between the Christian West and the Muslim East, Her peoples are known for their hospitality and loyalty. Georgians are also renowned for their bountiful vineyards and are celebrated for their wonderfully diverse, polyphonic music.

“Many musicologists talk about Georgian polyphony developing as early as 400 CE,” says Reid Robins, who is the group’s baritone voice.  “Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of two or more independent melodic parts. Georgian folk music is one of the oldest traditions of polyphonic music in the world.”

In 2002 Robins joined forces with Andrea Kuzmich and Shalva Mahakashvili in forming a new vocal trio which they named Zari (meaning “bell and “lament”). The trio has seen five exciting years, with three trips to Georgia, many concerts in Toronto, a CD and well-received performances at the St.John’s Sound Symposium.

The three virtuosos bring substantial experience to the group and each offers a unique gift with which Zari achieves its beautiful blended sound. Currently Zari is considered by many to be one of the finest Georgian vocal trios in the world.

Shalva, the group’s native Georgian is “the real thing,” comments Robins. “He has been a musician since childhood and grew up busking on the streets of downtown Rustavi. He not only knows the folk music but is a wonderful instrumentalist as well. He has that unmistakable Georgian sound which brings authenticity to the group. He is in my opinion, the spiritual centre of Zari.”

Shalva’s partner in Zari and in life is Andrea Kuzmich, an accomplished jazz singer and Ph.D. student in musicology. “Andrea brings an unusual component to Zari in that she is singing music that has typically been sung by men,” notes Robins. “Academics, other musicians and the music loving public have responded with acceptance and surprise, because she does what she does so well. All three of us are devoted to learning this incredible material and have found a
balance between a growing facility with the music and humility in seeing how much there is to learn. This comes from having heard the very best. ”

Their first CD, “ZARI: Songs of Georgia” includes earthy renderings of work songs, beautiful love songs, lullabies and moving liturgical pieces. Zari’s repertoire is extensive and they have performed in Georgia in front of esteemed guests such as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, The Patriarch of the Orthodox Georgian Church and well-known master musician Anzor Erkomaishvili.

With the current political scene and North American influences making their way into Sakartvelo, Robins is moved by the continued reverence Georgians have for performing and interpreting their ethnic folk musics. “Georgian music is still one of the world’s great secrets.”  says Robins. Zari offers it to us beautifully, to delight our hearts and spirits.

Greyeyes Family Connections ~

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(Composed in 2012: Toronto)
Over the past two years, we’ve become aware of the depths of our maternal Wyandot Ancestry. One of the most affirming aspects of this incredible gift, is how completely and easily I feel I have merged with this information and how relieved I am that my spirituality locks into the spiritual paradigm and worldview, so easily. It’s as if I have come home to something known, but not learned, something understood but accessible perhaps by blood and collective memory; moments of  dream consciousness perhaps revealed by a particular kind of creative spiritual openness…this deep connection.

As a young art student, gazing upward in Walker Court at The Art Gallery of Ontario my eyes would travel around the names of the original Ontario Indigenous peoples mounted under the crown moulding in an installation by Lothar Baumgarten, honouring their history: Nippissing, Ojibwe, Tionontati (Petun), Attawandaron (Neutral), Wendat (Huron) …Algonquin, and they would always come to rest on both HURON – those words felt, sounded and looked like words I knew and understood I cannot explai why but my eyes would well up with tears. Although this piece has been
challenged by Indigenous artist Robert Houle, I was unaware of the political issues with this work at the time.

Of course I knew of Lake Huron and that everything in Windsor and Michigan seemed to be named after the HURON Wyandotts, including the cemetery but I knew not why it filled me with such strange emotions, in fact I felt compelled to ride my bike down HURON street every day to go to school. I felt a stirring, as if my heart locked onto those words, though again, I knew not why.

One of my cousins, Margaret Greyeyes  {pictured left} was known for her good works and was a pillar of strength for the Ohio Wyandots, as they suffered eradication of their culture and the horrific Indian Removal. Although she converted, as many did to Christianity, I like to think that underneath the Christian wrap, was the indigenous reality hidden in plain sight  as was a common expression in those days…  I have already learned so much about my blood and Ancestors. Much later in my journey, I learned though my work with the Wendat Wyandot Women’s Advisory Council and Professor kathryn Magee Labelle about the detailed histories of some of our most beloved women Ancestors. Their tremendous strength and Motherwork maintained several communities across time and space.

In 2012 I made my first trip to Oklahoma to receive my clan name. Such peace and ‘connectedness’ are hard to describe ~  but after so many years of searching, I feel a great sense of ease.

Toronto 2012

Taǫmęˀšreˀ ižátsih
Hatiⁿgyáʔwiš ayeʔtarúʔtęʔ
Wandat ažáʔtuʔtę
tižamęh, tiawenhk, thank you!

Addendum 2026: In the last 16 years I have covered a lot of territory. I despair of Wyandot and Wendat alike challenged on identity issues and I encourage people to do more research so that they become aware of our tremendous history and our five communities across Turtle Island. Our people suffered a great deal but have remained strong and present on these lands. Carrying the blood of a few nationalities… I consider myself very gifted to have these incredible cultures as part of my genetic inheritance and have met so many wonderful cousins and family members along the way.  Peace. Toronto Feb 25, 2026. 

 

 

 

Eric Morse: Journalist and “Cabbagetown Photographer” at large, has it covered!

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‘Cabbagetown Photographer’ Eric Morse opens new exhibit May 1, 2012

Gregarious and oft’ seen ~ camera ’round neck, beret on head, rushing to and fro, or heading up Parliament Street at breakneck speed, Eric Morse has a very wide photographic territory and quite the ‘singular eye’ for detail.

Dubbed “The Cabbagetown Photographer” by former Cabbagetown BIA Chair Paul Dineen, Eric covers all of the Cabbagetown Festivals, functions at local charities, “dos” for politicians, and events at the Military Institute. He has taken an unanticipated sabbatical from artistic photography since March 2009 due to involvement in the provincial elections administration, but returns with an exhibition at the Parliament St Library (Parliament and Gerrard Streets), opening May 1 and running to May 31.

As a young boy ‘somewhere near Chapleau, Ontario’, Eric was given a Brownie Hawkeye plastic camera and went about “pestering” everyone for pictures. Morse says he has “some very blurry, very crooked, square photographs of his Grandmother’s knees! “You know, I had a relatively normal northern Ontario childhood, I grew up in small towns and lumber settlements in the Canadian shield, and…” he laughs, ”because nature was all around me, the object of my photography when I first got my hands on a camera, was to escape it, as much as possible!”

Later on, Eric did his degree in Soviet and Eastern European Studies at Carleton, “…which was all the rage at that point as International Relations and Defence Studies seem to be today. After my degree, I went off and spent a year at Leningrad State University, when it was exotic but not so fashionable. When I returned, there were only three things I could be: a ‘spook’ (spy), a diplomat, or a journalist and so I became first one, and then another of those.’

Morse has worked extensively in the non-profit and government relations sectors and has had a lengthy relationship with Canadian business, amateur sport, cultural and political communities. He is currently the Director of Communications for the RCMI. He also writes on international and foreign relations themes, appearing regularly in the Ottawa Citizen and occasionally in the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Star. He also reports and shoots for The Bulletin.

Throughout his life, Eric says photography has become important to him, progressing gradually to serious art. Streetscapes and streetcars have been two of his pet subjects. “Streetcars are very large, amiable, bright forms of urban wildlife” he quips, “they’re interesting and stimulating subjects, And of course right now they are in the centre of this current remarkable breakdown in civic politics.”

Former Mayor David Miller owns four miniatures of his streetcars, which under a previous administration hung proudly in City Hall.

Morse’s photographic style is realistic, journalistic, keeping the photographic essence of the image while introducing graphic elements into the background. Colour tends to be sparse and restricted to essential elements. “I’m unabashedly retro,’ he says. ‘As digital image-making has matured technologically and become pretty much everyone’s idiom – way more so than the Kodacolor print ever imagined being – there seems to be a stylistic reaching back…often not so much a replication of styles as of feeling.”

Eric’s lovely and well-known images of Cabbagetown, Riverdale Farm, The Island and his streetcar shots have been exhibited in many venues such as, Ben Wick’s; The Left Door, Praxis Gallery and City Hall among others. The twenty works featured at the May exhibition will feature a combination of old favourites and a selection of new works. The exhibit opens May 1 at 6 pm.

For selections of Eric’s images, visit http://www.photoshop.com/users/emorse.

 

Betty White: Art Sanctifies Experience

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If an artist were to decide that her unconscious mind and feeling states should direct her work, does she then decide that the artistic success of the piece she has created, or her whole body of work for that matter, depends on how much of her deep self is revealed or in turn how easily that work is understood by those who view it? Carl Jung the great psychoanalyst and interpreter of anthropological symbolism said, “The secret of artistic creation and the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of ‘participation mystique’,  to that level of experience at which it is man who lives and not the individual.” Such is the world view of Cabbagetown artist Betty White, who successfully documents her life’s landmarks in personal, accessible and moving works of art.

Entering her work space, I am surrounded by shells, tied sticks, stones and pieces of nature, full yet organised tables of pastels, papers, books and musical instruments, cabinets of curio and treasures. I know I am walking into a specific {mind} set; the outward manifestation of the inner creativity of Betty White. A work in progress, pinned to the studio wall attracts me, other powerful works hang in frames along the hall. The large works on paper consist of sculpted pressed paper pieces; images in pastels, pencil and other media. Each handsomely framed piece in Betty’s hallway gallery, seems to represent a specific chapter of her experience; a  visual Book of Hours. The sculptures; wrapped or tied pieces in small archaic looking figurative shapes, suggest a child bound to a mother, or perhaps a shaman ~ as the rock itself. Nature-crafted, artist-made talismans of some unconscious longing, or marker of change.

Born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1944, into a family of accomplished musicians and scholars and having achieved her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966 from The University of Colorado, White began her career as apprentice to Olly Reinheimer, the prodigious Brazilian fibre artist in Rio de Janeiro. She has enhanced her skills as a textile artist, by taking paper-making workshops in Montreal and at O.C.A.D. in Toronto. She taught at The Canadian Guild of Crafts in Montreal and The School House in Toronto and ran a paper-making course for teachers at The Children’s Museum in Boston. Betty has exhibited in France, recently in Mexico; Toronto, Martha’s Vineyard and Boston and her work is in the collections of  Readers Digest, The Canada Council and Art Bank. Her works are also collected privately.

Senior Art Teacher at The Montcrest School, Betty White lives her art and about that process she comments; “I plug into a sort of ‘archetypal’ imagery that makes sense; my own creative visual language. I know a piece is finished is when it’s original, natural and emotionally true.” Thus Ms. White names  herself  ‘Modern Primitive’…someone who somehow carries in her bloodstream, the echoes of a distant past.”

The word “Archetype” appeared in European texts as early as 1545.  It is derived from the Latin noun ~ archetypum,  after the Greek noun ~ arkhetypon. It means simply, “first-moulded.” Archetypes are long present in mythologies of various cultures from classical literature, such as epic myths, to modern re-workings of fairy tales. The use of archetypal symbols to understand human personalities was developed as an aspect of analytical psychology by Carl Jung in the early 20th century. The benefit of these archetypes, whether depicted in drama, or used in fiction and art, is suggested by the idea that groups and individuals are able to recognize unconsciously the themes present in character, motivation, or image. Each artist may develop an acute understanding of her/his work, say in analysis, or through their practice of making art, or even remain unaware of their own inner workings yet continue to generate a lifetime’s output, such as with some of the so called naive or primitive artists.

It is the universal experience of family life, music and an awareness of death, filtered through her specific understanding and her particular execution of materials, which attracts, then snares the viewer. “My experience with loss was the beginning of a lot of what was to come. I was well established as an artist and then lost my first child. The experience changed me profoundly. I understood how short life is and my ’emergency’ magnified and intensified my experience of life. I loved every exquisite moment of being alive. It also accelerated and intensified my experience of art-making and I processed this through my artwork for many years. Initially my work was motivated by childhood memories and poetry, which I adore. Be it a poem, a novel or a good opera, they all contain the element that cuts across and touches you deeply.”

Her love of music and musical influence is evident in the exploration of  a poem regarding The Viola D’amore; by Irish poet Moya Canon. Betty’s connection to dream states and her womanly expression of powerful and resonant ideas, is depicted in  “The Mother, The Child” seen here, where the cello body becomes that of the mother. Woman as vessel.

Ms. White’s work has been in demand over the many years of her career. “In the early days, I was a free spirit, I’ve grown in growing and growing up. I see the world reflected in the children I teach and I’ve scratched my way into that awareness, that as an artist, you live out the tensions of the culture you’re living in. You know, I don’t let my works go unless they’re going to a place they’ll be cherished.” White says “The language of my work is love, dreams, music, children and family and in that, we’re all connected.”

 

Clive Holden; This Artist’s Destination ~ Utopia

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Widely exhibited an internationally lauded for his film poem series, Trains of Winnipeg; writer and moving image artist Clive Holden lives in Riverdale with wife and Giller Prize nominee, Alissa York. Currently Holden is in production on his comprehensive new project Utopia Suite, segments of which were launched at Images Festival in Toronto, in April 2006 followed by the European launch in Amsterdam at The Holland Festival. Utopia Suite is a visually and contextually complex, meticulously rendered, multimedia investigation of current views regarding the concept of  Utopia.

Inspired to begin his new project while conversing with friends at a film Festival in Europe, Holden explains, “Utopia Suite is about maintaining hope. Being conscious about what’s going on in the world without losing hope is extremely difficult. I feel that hope is a very important ingredient of remaining politically progressive. And I  think movement is required to make hope… which interests me because I make art with moving images, and I think that this movement itself is Utopia, it’s the destination.”

Utopia is currently understood as meaning an ideal or hypothetical society. It has been used to describe both intentional communities and some fictional societies as portrayed in literature, however the term has been used pejoratively, often by rightist media says Holden; referring to an unlikely place or unrealistic ideal. Holden believes it became out of fashion to discuss idealistic issues as recently as the early seventies. “It’s funny to think that hope would be considered outdated and this may be changing now. I’m tracking the use of the word  Utopia on news sites on the web and it’s cropping up much more than say, three years ago. Recently the word started appearing in the centre left and more progressive media but very cautiously. Op Ed pieces would contain questions like ‘Is it time to start thinking like this again?’ They wanted to not make the same mistakes that it’s perceived we made in the sixties, or I think simply to not be laughed at.”

Holden made some initial discoveries regarding this topic, early on. “As a teenager I discovered both Utopian and Dystopian literature.” He comments. “I read Orwell, Huxley and then Sir Thomas More’s  Utopia. Now, I’m trying to approach Utopianism as a dynamic and organic process, rather than as a static edifice or place. What is the ideal state, or city, or world? These ideas can be very problematic in the way they’ve been presented traditionally, often with built-in racism or a slave class for example.”

With such a seemingly boundless concept, Holden’s creative process is indeed lengthy, each project potentially taking many years to complete. “I spent the first year reading and researching but I’ve now moved into the core of what I do, or the production phase of making films, videos and the actual moving images. 2008 will be the first year when I’m really going to roll out the work and show it in galleries and at film festivals. One of the things I’m looking at, is a blend of ways to exhibit the work… I also work with text, music and web culture, so the different elements of the ‘suite’ are really conversations between various subcultures in the art world, which is utopian in a way.”

The project incorporates Holden’s strikingly beautiful looped, split screen montage and full screen images with sound and text, in a cycle of films with such titles as Utopia Suite Disco, You Are Being Remembered, Engines of Despair and Jesus Jesus Jesus, dealing with a substantial array of segmented concepts revolving around the central Utopian theme.

In his work, Holden continually disrupts the narrative in an experimental fashion. He admits “It’s very difficult for an artist to subvert or sidestep narrative, because people think by making patterns and they have a love for this, it’s pleasurable––narratives are just patterns, so they’ll build them out of the raw materials you give them. Many film-goers have very conventional ideas of how to view a movie.” Holden believes that we are now unlearning some of the many film conventions we’ve taken for granted. “Ideally, I’d prefer that people approach my films in the way they might listen to music, where they often have a wider range of tastes and more tolerance for complexity.”

Utopia Suite will take Clive Holden into 2012 or 2013. As the project comes to its end, it will include a final large-scale installation; there will be a book, the texts and all the work will be reflected on the web as the project progresses and expands. You can visit/audit Clive Holden’s expansive Utopia Suite in progress, with supporting materials at: http://www.utopiasuite.com/