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an exhibition blog Aunt MaudÕs Fusty
Victorian Stole
November
2014
This is
supposed to be a blog, and blogs are supposed to be like diaries, and
Òbloggers,Ó (ugly word) are supposed to blog once or twice a day or something
ridiculous like that, with the plan of selling an actual book to our ÒfollowersÓ
some day. Whoever
invented this definition, did not have children. Though I have not been
blogging, I have been writing, finishing a novel for the second time, in spite of the broken legs, dental disasters, and
stomach parasites that have been out to get my family in the last eleven
months. And IÕve
been sewing very little, just enough to finish something. ItÕs so nice to
think of only the next stitch, instead of thinking about how to make all the
words in a novel roar and grumble perfectly to each other. So much of the
writing of the past can be accused of being light and merely entertaining because
life was pretty dark before the invention of antibiotics and anesthesia. So nice to think of something merely nice. IÕm having
difficulty coming up with a better name for this fur and velvet stole. It was
the damndest thing to photograph, with the glare
off the gold brocade and the furry blackness. It looks
like the kind of dark and elaborate thing that would be getting fusty in
great Aunt MaudÕs trunk. Its genesis was in the Red Velvet Waterfall or Vagina
Scarf, which didnÕt keep me warm enough at one particular writers
conference. But what could keep you
warm enough in a hotel basement that was itself wrapped in a thousand miles
of Saskatchewan winter? Not even Aunt
Maud would know. This stole
was made from leftovers. I had to do something with all the black and purple
roses that didnÕt fit on my Poem Coat (not digitally revealed yet). I had to
do something with the scraps from my Ukrainian BabaÕs Persian lamb. Excuses,
I know, from a compulsive maker of stuff. And hoarder
of stuff, too. I bought the fuchsia brocade East Indian camise and blue-green velvet
dress just for the material. When you work in collage, you have to first have
material at hand. I save crazy things like the buckles and straps off of
sandals IÕve revised, later to rivet them to some other article of clothing. But what
exactly am I going to do with the white mink pillbox hat I got for five
dollars? IÕll wear Aunt Maud to the choir Christmas party
after we sing Halleluiah. For more Revisionary go to
the Revisionary BlogrollÉ
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Toronto Globe and Mail, Jim Bartley: ÒirresistibleÓ Òbeastly goodÓ ÒBernice FriesenÕs art is finely
honed and gracefully wielded, her darkly beautiful images inseparable from
her thematic purpose.Ó ÒItÕs said of some novels that they beg
to be filmed. The pictures Friesen makes are a cinematographerÕs dream.Ó The Winnipeg Free Press, Ariel Gordon: Òimmensely pleasurableÓ Òwholly convincing leaps of the
imaginationÓ Òa great
successÓ Pages and Patches Devin Pacholik ÒFriesen is a master.Ó http://pagesandpatches.blogspot.ca/2012/03/book-of-beasts-bernice-friesen.html See Reviews: http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Reviews
Book of Beasts Buy From Coteau
Books http://coteaubooks.com/index.php?p=Shop And The Book of Beasts is now in
French Translation from QuŽbec Amerique: Le Bestiaire
des anges Translated by Lori Saint-Martin and
Paul GagnŽ, 2011. http://www.quebec-amerique.com/livre-details.php?id=1225
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God was a little black-haired bastard named Charlie with wet
sheet skin, bleeding gums, and fists full of iron oxide pebbles which he
flung in JamesÕs face, each sting becoming a freckle. His mother told him it
was God whoÕd given him the freckles, and it was true because he couldnÕt
remember having freckles before Charlie started throwing stones. If freckles
were so bad, at least they werenÕt his fault. He convinced himself they were
caused by wounds, like the blood he saw on JesusÕ side, flowing down the
plaster of his motherÕs crucifix like bubbled spit. It was easier to look at
JesusÕ blood than at his own, and after he realized freckles were ugly --
except on his beautiful mother -- it wasnÕt easy to look at himself at all. Skinny, big ears, red hair messed like the knots of hay
sticking out of a cowÕs mouth. These were the things he heard about himself
after he got into the habit of listening, when being seen and not heard
became too boring. He told himself he didnÕt care, began scratching his face.
Get rid of the spots. Even if his mother said she liked them, that they were
delicious, especially when she was a dog, and licked them off his nose -- see
the freckles on her tongue? They tasted salty, she said, were delicate and
crunchy like little potato crisps. Sometimes he was a dog, too, and so he
scratched anyway. And then his father told him to stop that scratching, sit
still, and he would, almost, until every adult eye was averted, and then his
hand would strike like the tongue of a frog, and he would stuff another jaffa cake in his mouth. Everything was alive to him. Not just the neighbor's cat
and his grandfather's King-Charles' spaniel, not just the ladybirds and
dragonflies and earthworms, but the turnips wincing as they were pulled from
the ground in his mother's garden. He made little playful screams whenever
his mother tore lettuce apart for a salad, said ouch, ouch, when she
chopped onions, misinterpreting her tears as sympathy for the poor
vegetables. He refused to eat the tiniest grape from the vine, even though
his father told him it would perish anyway. He kept it in a little baby-food
jar in the fridge, and took it out to hold it in the palm of his hand and pet
it like a kitten. His first word, as a baby, had been meow, and he
was a cat-sneak behind doors and beneath the tablecloth. His grandfather
called his father a senseless dreamer -- that acting, way back then,
for GodÕs sake -- who should never have married a child who was such a harpy,
whatever that meant. It seemed to mean an Irish woman who wore her red hair
too loose, her blouses too tight, and who didnÕt care what she said in polite
company -- and Oxford was nothing if not polite in the late 1950Õs.... Awards -Fiction Award, Saskatchewan
Book Awards
-Globe and MailÕs top 100 and top 5 first fictions
-Longlisted, Rogers Writers Trust of Canada
Fiction Prize |
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Prairie
Fire, Tom Schmidt: Òreads
like a freight train bearing down on youÓ Òferocious feminist verse that chews
up the patriarchs of western civilization from Freud to Plato to the
Pope and spits them out.Ó CV2,
Tanis MacDonald: Òintelligent
and hilariousÓ Ònot for anyone who wishes to keep
their dogma chained up in their mental backyard.Ó Wireweed: ÒsplendidÓ ÒFriesen
is a stand-up comicÓ Òuproariously,
ribaldly funnyÓ Òshe
has merged with the goddess KaliÓ |
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Canadian Author: from ÒBernice Friesen,
Winner of the Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in
Canada:Ó ÒBernice Friesen calls it luck, but
anyone whoÕs read her work could only call it talent.Ó Òclear, pared down, yet richly
expressive prose.Ó http://www.canauthors.org/awards/metcalf.html Quill and Quire, Maria
Campbell: ÒI thoroughly enjoyed and applaudÓ Òthere are no cheap shots here, no
easy observations, nothing that appears in uncrystallized
form.Ó ÒFriesen writes with the confidence
of someone who knows sheÕs taken full advantage of hindsight, yet her
narratives read as thought theyÕve been written from Ôthe inside,Õ from the
confines of a high schoolÕs narrow halls.Ó Purchase
from Thistledown Press: http://www.thistledownpress.com/cgi-bin/thistle/thistle.cgi?function=dispbook&bkid=59&nf= |
It sits on my desk in a sour cream container, in a nest of
white and pink Kleenex. On it is a happy face, slightly screwy, and a
squiggle of yellow marker on top for hair. The assignment is to carry an egg
around for a week, pretending itÕs your kid. Dad could hardly believe it when
I told him Mrs. Bowman makes the Family Life class do this every year. He
told me to do what I want - even scramble it and lose the ten marks if it
would make me feel better. I donÕt know why IÕm taking this stupid class
anyway. Just because StephanieÕs here and everyone else is
doing it, I guess. Ò...and at this point, the sperm meets the egg.Ó Mrs. BowmanÕs flabby cheeks get redder and splotchy.
Reproduction embarrasses her almost as much as it embarrasses Stephanie.
StephanieÕs only 16 like me, so itÕs forgivable. Mrs. Bowman has three kids,
so itÕs not. ÒCan you imagine Mrs. B. having sex?Ó I whisper, and point
out Mrs. B.Õs bulgy panty line. Stephanie once told me I was the funniest
person in the world. SheÕs weird with jokes. She laughs the hardest at the
dirty ones, but wonÕt tell them ; she absorbs them but then wonÕt let them
escape. ÒShh, Lori,Ó Stephanie always
blushes when she laughs. ÒOur next topic is motherhood, the most important part of
the Home Economics course,Ó Mrs. Bowman says, right after she skims over the
pregnancy handouts with us. SheÕd been sick, so we were way behind in our
notes. I think she got sick on purpose, just so she could skip over the sex
part. I squash the new heading under the scrawled notes on my
last page, and wish I hadnÕt been late for class so I could have gotten paper
from my locker. IÕd seen Stephanie, Lill and Faith
whispering at the locked door, and when IÕd got there, theyÕd stopped, guilty
looks on their faces, especially Stephanie. At first IÕd thought they were
talking about me, but Mrs. Bowman was walking right behind me jangling her
keys, so I couldnÕt be sure.... Awards:
The
Vicky Metcalf Award for Best Young Adult Short Story in Canada.
(Title Story, The Seasons Are Horses, won, from the Book of the same
name) |
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Press Kit
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BERNICE FRIESEN was born in Rosthern,
Sask. The life of her grandmotherÕs family has been
published in The Mulberry Tree by Victor Carl Friesen and Anna Friesen.
She trained as a printmaker at the University of
Saskatchewan, ending up with a B.F.A in visual art and a B.Ed. by 1990. She took
creative writing courses with Elizabeth Brewster, Guy Vanderhaegue
and Tim Lilburn, and attended the Banff Writing Studio. She has been an art
studio lab assistant, art gallery educator, and has taught Sage Hill Writing
Experience for teens, and Fiction Freefall through
the Saskatoon Writers Coop. Her writing and art has been published in Canada and
Europe, and has twice been short-listed for the CBC Radio Literary Awards.
Her writing has been included in two League of Canadian Poets winners anthologies, and Best Short Stories, 2002,
(Oberon). She has lived in England, New Zealand and British
Columbia, has taught herself to read French and Italian, and is currently
trying to understand quantum physics. Blame her for the art and design of
this website. She is the girl at the blackboard.
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View
the Shaw Cable interview of Bernice Friesen at |
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