Enroute to Marion Scott Gallery for yesterday's telephone interview with Shuvnai, I saw a pair of legs. Because I was early and looking to slow myself down, and because I know a "Fred Herzog" when I see one, I took their picture. Happy with it, I stopped to show the person whose legs they were.
"Ah," she said to the picture, "I would have take a picture too." She looked up at me, the sun in her face, her eyes brighter than any colour could make them. "Good of you to stop. Nice of you to show me."
She told me her name, and with pride, her age -- 69. "Are you an artist?" she asked, and I told her no, but I write on art. "I am an artist," she said, then added that she was trained in the social sciences.
By then I recognized her accent. "You're from South Africa?"
"Yis," she said, and she told me how she and her family came to Canada 35 years ago.
"I have always wanted to go to South Africa," I said.
"It is a mean place," she said somewhat meanly. "There is a tension between those who left and those who stayed. It is always there, this tinsion. And the men, they are childish, stunted."
"It is the light I am most interested in."
"Ah yes, the light," and she brightened. "The only other place I have seen light like that is Hawaii. The light in the Southern Hemisphere always reminds me of home."
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