Take the daughter to the local museum. Nelson. Touchstones. Most of the other museums aren't open yet, we've been to Creston (closed), to The Meadows (closed), to Salmo (closed), in the off season nobody wants to open.
The closed galleries, looking through the windows, our breath fogging the glass, everything we (I) want to know is inside...
We go to Touchstones, Nelson. They're always (I think) open. The gift shop, amusing, for a minute.
The History museum, upstairs, always the same, always interesting...
Some Native artifacts, pestle, fishing weights, baskets...
More native artifacts, arrowheads, spearheads, flints, an Iron hammer...
A pair of Antique women's skates. I rather like the fashion, women's skates now are all painted white, these are infinitely cooler...
And, without a doubt my favorite item, an old icon found in the Slocan Valley when they were felling trees, it was hammered to a tree by some well meaning missionaries for the Natives to worship, estimated around 1830 or 1840...
The daughter feigns interest.
Then into the main exhibit. Edge of the Light, Tanya Pixie Johnson.
It's completely my thing. Mixed media, found objects, artifacts...and everywhere the "no photography" icon. There's no one patrolling, nobody would probably care, I doubt even the artist would care, but out of respect (abiding laws I disagree with) - I'll refrain from sharing pictures and instead describe some of the art:
Antique photographs, Victorian, with spring eyes and buttons protruding, drawn and etched upon, altered, statues - abstract, combinations of antique handles, knobs, taps, cameras, horns, square nails, the miscellany of garbage finds while out metal detecting arranged into - well, more ornate abstractions that somehow engage you, old jars filled with ... (I don't remember, moss? Lichen?), all bound together with twigs, stones, nails...
Dolls, old and creepy, paint peeling and flaking off their faces, filled with clockwork gears, the Brother's Quay comes to mind (and hers, I'm sure), halo's and auras of twigs, bodies of cheap plastic, the limbs amputated and used repurposed in other sculptures, the Virgin Mary, carved out of wood, old postcards replace the face, in simple frames that somehow lend a spirituality to her ideas...
Old books, opened, elaborated upon, drawn, annotated, doodled, shadow boxes of carefully cut out papers, it continues...
...fur dolls, coyote, dogs, other skulls for the head, stitched fur bodies, other found objects...
The daughter pays attention. She knows this, knows my apartment, jeep, house, the hundreds of places I've lived overflowing with junk, guesses now at my intentions...
Nothing I'd buy, I have all of this, can find all of this, will find - the rest of this, and my assemblages, while tangent, would not be precisely the same. But I'm impressed nonetheless, she's definitely on my page...