Art and Literature

Entries about creativity in all its forms, plus original creative material.

Buffy Sainte-Marie and Richard Thompson

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Category: Art and Literature
Created: Monday, 03 August 2015 06:04
Published: Monday, 03 August 2015 05:50
Written by John Standish, 774 ABC Melbourne
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Jon Faine, Richard Thompson, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Derek Guille

"I gave a lot of support to Bahá'í people in the '80s and '90s … Bahá'í people, as people of all religions, is something I'm attracted to … I don't belong to any religion. … I have a huge religious faith or spiritual faith but I feel as though religion … is the first thing that racketeers exploit. … But that doesn't turn me against religion." - Buffy Sainte-Marie

{audio}http://ncag.org.nz/bsmbahai.mp3{/audio}

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Proudly Canadian: Buffy Sainte-Marie

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Category: Art and Literature
Created: Saturday, 01 August 2015 17:46
Published: Saturday, 01 August 2015 17:38
Written by Cashbox
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BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE

Buffy Sainte-Marie OC (Beverly Sainte-Marie) is a Canadian-American Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.

In 1997 she founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honors for both her music and her work in education and social activism.

{josquote}"I gave a lot of support to Bahá'í people in the '80s and '90s … Bahá'í people, as people of all religions, is something I'm attracted to … I don't belong to any religion. … I have a huge religious faith or spiritual faith but I feel as though religion … is the first thing that racketeers exploit. … But that doesn't turn me against religion."{/josquote}

Buffy Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was later adopted, growing up in Massachusetts, with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy and graduating in the top ten of her class. She went on to earn a Ph.D in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts in 1983.

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Carole Lombard Baha'i

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Category: Art and Literature
Created: Friday, 26 December 2014 01:36
Published: Friday, 26 December 2014 01:22
Written by Robert Matzen
Hits: 2977

The Weaver

Carole Lombard {josquote}Confidential Baha’i documentation reveals a spiritual side to the earthy, madcap Lombard that would surprise many{/josquote}

Carole Lombard loved the secular side of Christmas, as demonstrated by the number of surviving letters, cards, and notes attached to or referencing various gifts presenting by Carole to friends and acquaintances over the years. Examples can be seen at the fine Carole & Co. web site. Much less is known about her religious beliefs, which was a topic she kept private. A glimpse into Carole’s belief system is found in the poem entitled The Weaver that she wished to have read at her funeral service. I am not a religious person by nature; I would label myself as spiritual, so this column is by no means meant as an endorsement of any religion. The poem, by Grant Colfax Tullar of Bolton, Massachusetts, was abridged in Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3. Many variations exist online and in religious tracts and emblazon many plaques hung on many walls, but this version of The Weaver seems to be the full original. It reads:

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Just Robin White

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Category: Art and Literature
Created: Friday, 12 December 2014 23:49
Published: Friday, 12 December 2014 23:39
Written by Diana Dekker, Stuff
Hits: 2535

Artist Dame Robin White with her work at Pataka.

Dame Robin White's artwork "Ko e Hala Hangatonu: The Straight Path" is 25 metres long. It runs, in a copper-coloured avenue of painted tapa, at Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures in Porirua. It is White's most ambitious artwork and took two years to complete. She created it in collaboration with young Tongan artist Ruha Fifita and a community of other Tongan women.

{josquote}...it could equally reference White's undeviating Baha'i faith, coupled with an irregular life path.{/josquote}

The Straight Path, with its hand-worked patterns, relates to a world journey – but it could equally reference White's undeviating Baha'i faith, coupled with an irregular life path.

Pataka is close to where White taught art at Mana College after her "golden years" at Elam School of Fine Arts. It is also close to where she lived, as a teacher, as part of one of the country's wildest early conglomerations of young idealists and intellectuals.

Poet Sam Hunt was there at Bottle Creek, Paremata, not far from her corrugated iron shack, and so was the late historian Michael King along with unfurling wordsmiths Jack Lasenby, Fleur Adcock and Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. They came and went, loved, discussed and created their way through the late 1960s and 1970s.

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