Victor Cicansky ~ Sculptor

A show in Santa Fe

2011-06-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

The First Day of Summer

2011-06-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

It's been another cool, wet, grey day. The sun made an appearance late in the afternoon and stayed for a few minutes, just a glimmer. The real summer heat that pole beans and tomatoes love, hasn't arrived. Unless we get a couple of hot hot sunny months there won't be much of a bean, tomato and squash crop.

On the bright side, the paper birch outside my kitchen door is luxuriant. In over 15 years I have never seen it hung so heavy with glossy leaves. Branches droop with the weight. The hostas, berginias, wild cow parsnip and Siberian Irises thrive in the cool wet conditions. The plants are taller and the colors more vibrant. In the far corner of the garden the fragrance of the Korean lilacs is seductive.

An iris I traded for and planted five years ago has finally bloomed. The information I got with the trade was that it was a tall purple iris. I didn't know what to expect. The purple blooms are huge almost the size of my open hand. In a brief moment of morning sun the deep chokecherry purple standards and the wine colored falls are dazzling. There are few flowers in my perennial beds to match this iris for striking blooms.

A Winter Trip to the Foundry

2011-02-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

On February 1st, with afternoon windchill temperatures a mean -34°, I left for Calgary and the foundry where I have my bronze work cast. I phoned the highway hot line and was informed that winter driving conditions exist to the Alberta border: blowing snow, drifting and icy sections. It’s a winter drive and I carry extra clothes, a sleeping bag, food, water, candles and matches. I have good winter tires but I am still cautious about my speed. The panorama of snow and sky that unfolds before me is not exactly a winter wonderland; it’s a slow and difficult drive and it was a relief to see Swift Current through the drifting snow. I decide to stay the night. Overnight, the temperatures moderated somewhat, the wind died down, and the warming sun on the highway made for good winter driving to Calgary.

Next morning the bronze casting excitement begins. Bronze lost wax casting process has been around for long time and was known to many cultures as far back as 4000 BC. and has survived as medium for artistic creation .

There is something magical about the metamorphosis of a creation modeled in clay or wood and wax being cast into bronze. It’s a process that depends on the power of fire. Simply put, the original sculpture is invested in a refractory slurry, air-dried, the mold of wood and wax is burned out, leaving an empty refractory shell into which white-hot bronze is poured. With the investment (the shell) cleaned off, the bronze sculpture pieces of the original sculpture, sit in a pile on the floor of the foundry waiting to be assembled by the skillful foundry team and the artist. A patina is applied to the sculpture and then lacquered to protect the finish.

If the trip to Calgary was challenging, the return trip to Regina was even more so. I finished my work at the foundry around 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, had my van loaded up and was ready to go. The weather advisory from Environment Canada was not good. A big storm was brewing over the Cypress Hills that would affect Medicine Hat, Maple Creek and Swift Current, and would begin pounding the region with snow and freezing temperatures beginning Saturday afternoon. Rather than be snowbound in Calgary waiting out the storm, I decided to drive to Medicine Hat, stay the night and head for Regina early Saturday morning.

I was warned that the weather and the road conditions along the Number One could be unpredictable. It was raining as I left, but less than an hour out of Calgary the rain turned to hail, then it started to snow, which turned into rain again and continued to rain all the way to Medicine Hat. Unpredictable indeed! I stayed the night in Medicine Hat.

The Saturday report on the Saskatchewan hotline warned against unnecessary travel on a stretch of highway from Maple Creek to Swift Current that’s always unpredictable with blowing snow, icy conditions and most worrisome, black ice. There were patches that bore out the road reports but for most of way the driving was slow, and would have been uneventful but for the small herds of antelope along the north side of the highway. The pronghorn antelope is found only on the Great Plains of North America and is so fast it can reach speeds of 60 miles per hour and can outrun any predator.

Stopped in Swift Current for a cup of tea to prime myself up for the final stretch of road. Surprisingly the sun was out, and the highway was mostly clear and hazard-free. Outside the town of Herbert I passed a moose munching on twigs and grasses.

I was feeling a bit hungry myself and determined that upon my arrival home, I’d stop at the new Orange Boot Bakery and pick up a warm freshly baked baguette, stop for a bottle of good wine, and along with the Applewood Smoked Cheddar in the fridge at home, I’d rest and celebrate another successful trip to the foundry.

And finally, here is the finished table that I brought home from the foundry:

The Winter Garden

2011-01-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in the kitchen looking out at my winter garden. Recent storms have piled drifts upon drifts of snow covering most of the perennial stalks I left standing in the fall cleanup. The prairie sunflower, clumping grasses (Karl Forester, yes, that's the name of the grass), yarrow, a couple of rose bushes and tangled pieces of driftwood, tall enough to defy the drifts, poke through the snow.

Alongside Karl Forester, October Corn, a five foot tall bronze sculpture has easily managed, for several decades now, to withstand the elements. Further down the garden path sit two terra cotta self-portrait planter pots buried under the snow.

Closer to the pond stands a lovely clumping paper birch, lustrous white in the bright January sun. Next to it half buried in the snow is a sculpture of the persistent and tenacious dandelion. In the icy pond cattails gone to seed are among the perennial survivors.

Bordering the pond, old weathered prairie bones I collected over the years, sit in a pile, reminders for me of Regina’s past as Pile-o-bone, a landscape still I carry around in my head. The pile-o-bones lie comfortably under the snow.

My fascination with the bones surfaced again when Reginians celebrated the city’s centennial in 2003. As I handled some of these old bones I was struck by the strong resemblance between the architecture of bones and plants. Vertebrae have the look of an exotic prairie amaryllis, limbs like stems and flat bones like leaves. In my imagination these bones were transformed into a garden of ceramic bone plant delights. Two of these sculptures sit outside my kitchen window radiating color in my snow drifted winter garden.

Blight-free Shovel Tomatoes

2010-10-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

I love tomatoes. Nothing beats the feel of holding a firm vine ripe tomato in hand...except the taste. For decades now I have been able to satisfy that love by planting between 25 and 30 mostly heirloom tomatoes.

This past summer my plants, loaded with green fruits, struggled through the cool, moist weather catching enough sun to produce a few mid-season ripe fruits. If the rains stopped and if the summer warmed up, it looked like I'd have a fair crop.

Then late season blight hit. Large brown spots began appearing first on the leaves, the stems and then the green tomatoes. I picked all the sound green tomatoes, washed them in a vinegar water solution, and laid them on newspaper in the cold room hoping to ripen them. After a week or so I noticed brown spots developing on some of the green fruits and decided to process the remainder into a green tomato relish.

There's always next year. Hopefully extreme cold weather will kill off the fungus and my tomatoes will flourish under the hot prairie sun. Meantime I have created my own shovel blight free tomatoes. Check them out:

Tomato Shovel

6 1/2" x 22 1/2" x 12"

Clay, glaze

2008

Sliced Tomato Shovel

6 1/2" x 22 1/2" x 12"

Clay, glaze

2008

Grow Regina Community Garden

2010-08-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

We all need to eat; and our food choices are many. Walk into any supermarket today and you are confronted with an abundance of food from all over the world. Not so long ago, in my youth and probably yours, most of the food we ate was grown right here. Times were tough but we ate well. Back then you built a house and you planted a garden because you intended to stay there for a while. Children grew up with backyard gardens and had the pleasure eating food fresh from plants in the garden.

Prosperity, convenience and propaganda slowly disconnected most of us from our food source: the garden soil, the sun and water that fed us. In a recent survey of children in large cities like New York, when asked where their food came from, they responded that their food came from the supermarket in plastic containers.

Ecological thinking and concern for where the planet is heading; and the clamor for good locally grown food, safe food, accelerated the growth of urban community gardens and farmers' markets. Well known is the Strathcona Community Heights community garden in Ottawa, Urban Eden in Edmonton and Cypress Community Garden in Kitsilano where I visited recently, a lovely spot in the middle of the city. More and more people are joining together to start community gardens.

Grow Regina is volunteer group of people gardening collectively with a mandate to enhance the social, economic and cultural well-being of Regina residents. The energy and inventiveness of this group makes it stand out as an inspiration, demonstrating what is possible when a committed group of gardeners come together to create a garden to grow food for themselves and others. It is a model for schoolyards, for backyards and even front yards and other modest green spaces in the city. The school children that are already involved in this community garden are learning how vegetables actually grow and are already committed citizens donating their harvest to the Regina Food Bank, providing families with children like themselves with good food for healthy bodies and healthy minds.

The next exciting building phase for Grow Regina is the gazebo that we are proposing to build that will be a centrepiece in this garden. It will provide a place for the gardeners to meet, relax, and talk about the unusual vegetables they are growing like purple broccoli, blue corn, Black Prince Tomatoes, orange cauliflower and yellow fingerling potatoes. Imagine culinary demonstrations in the gazebo, where food, grown in the garden, is prepared as an edible work of art, shared and eaten under its canopy roof. The gazebo may also provide a cultural venue for poetry readings, musical performances inspired by the garden and for collaborations with groups like New Dance Horizons who host the Secret Garden Tour. Weddings anyone?

A project like Grow Regina Community Garden does much good. I am pleased to offer my imagination to enhance this community effort to foster the passion for gardening and love of nature and art to deepen the sense of community and to give this place a soul.

The Brackendale Pantry

2010-07-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've returned from my Brackendale adventure. Artists for Kids operates under the auspices of the North Vancouver School Board. Over the years it has invited more than forty of the best-known artists in the country to the art camp to inspire both teachers and children.

As artist in residence I designed two projects for the students: one studio project and one environmental.

After a short slide talk about my pantries and jars, I produced a ceramic gallon of fish I had made and passed it around while we talked about what it was the students wanted to preserve. They were keen and pumped up with the magic of creation. "Just give us the clay!"... and the Brackendale Pantry was born, a collection of the jars these bright and talented students made.

Brackendale Outdoors

2010-07-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

The spectacular Paradise Valley near Brackendale, B.C. is an important gathering place for Bald Eagles. In the late fall, thousands of eagles congregate in this area from as far away as Saskatchewan, to feed on salmon. How do they all know when the salmon are running? Like so much in nature we know little about this "lower life" form phenomenon. To understand more about these birds we invited local Squamish elders to tell us about their history in this place. Around the fire in the Big House they drummed and sang their songs and told us stories about fish and taught us an eagle dance.

The next day we decided to build the biggest eagle's nest ever on Eagle's Point. The nest is 25 feet in diameter and the eggs are about the size of a small car. The first image is the nest. In the second image, the teachers, assistants and staff are all doing the eagle dance. In the final image, the nest builders proudly pose for the camera.

Lots of rain

2010-06-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

The rainy weeks of May and early June have put a stop to my gardening plans. Today is the first really sunny day. The tomatoes (Brown Prince, Japanese Trifele, German Dwarf, Stupice, Lemon Boy, Black Cherry and a couple of red cherry varieties) I planted before I left for Calgary and covered with hot caps are still standing. The Japanese Trifele are about 12" high and have already developed flowers? Has the cool, wet weather stunted the poor babies? Driven them into maturity prematurely? These plants when they are mature stand a meter tall.

SUN! The tomatoes, the peppers, the squashes need at a minimum of six hours of vibrant life giving sun each day. The potatoes are loving this weather.

2010-05-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

May 20, 2010. Radishes, onions and peas are up. The lettuces are doing great. What a delight to see these plants bursting through the soil. The swiss chard, Multicolor Bright Lights, I planted in peat pots is up. Next week I will plant them in bunches of three in the perennial beds throughout the garden. There's still so much to do. Two large beds 9' x 7' x 24" will have to be excavated. The large poplars in the park behind my place have invaded the beds breaching through the weed matt that linned the base and sides. What a chore. It has cooled off quite dramaticly so I'll tackle that job tomorrow, if it doesn't rain.

2010-05-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

May 13, 2010. By this date I'd have most of the garden beds dug and planted. Multiplier onions would be showing green shoots, early Yugoslavian lettuce and green romaine lettuces would be up at the two leaf stage. But not his year. The soil is still cool and wet. Fork in hand I dug a bed and was surprised how easily it turned over and without cling to the fork. It's the compost. I raked and levelled the bed and planted multipier onions, radishes lettuce. In a month or less I hope to be eating my first lettuce sandwich with a side of onions and radishes.

Welcome to my new blog.

2010-05-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

I'm a luddite, so this blog is a big leap and new venture for me. What I hope to post on this blog is my interest in gardening. This year it's been a slow.start. The weather has been cold and wet. I'm waiting for the sun.