Continuing the series of posts that try to capture the various pieces of art I have hanging around the house. Remember that these posts are made up of quick snapshots–these are hardly professional images, and the upstairs images are worse than the downstairs ones since the angles I could use to take the snapshots are much more highly constrained. The images in the post link to larger images.
Off to the right from the front foyer is the dining room. This room is actually dominated by the three silken hangings that take up the main double-height wall, but no matter what I do I can’t seem to get a decent picture of them (and you know my standards for ‘decent’ are pretty low for this series). I may need to remember to do this on a sunny afternoon.
At the opposite end of the dinning room from the hangings, there are two large photographs that take up opposite walls. Above the piano we have this one:
It’s pretty big–slightly better than 3 feet by 2 feet. It’s one of a limited set of 10 prints of the image prepared by photographer Margot Metcalfe (alternate site). Trish and I bought this for each other as our first anniversay present (yikes! our fifth anniversay is in less than 3 weeks!) even though it was a little more than we could afford–it’s so rare that we both like the same art.
The image is one from a series Margot did of images from religous locations. This one is from Iona Abbey in Scotland.
Opposite that, above the sideboard, is this photo:
That’s Edinburgh Castle. This one is also pretty big: nearly four feet across and more than two feet high, including the frame.
The picture is one I happened to see, and covet, at the gallery while I was having something else framed. Trish noticed my interest and arranged to get a copy and have it framed as a present for me–I think it was Trish and her parents going together on a birthday gift.
Someday we’ll have to stop in there–maybe when Sarah’s a little older and we can go on the distillery tour of Scotland.
A little farther along that wall you hit one side of the chimney for the wrap around fireplace, which has a number of smaller photographs scattered across it (yay for Lee Valley’s ingenuity). The side facing the dining room (or at least the part of it above the actual fireplace opening) looks like this:
Originally the idea was to change the pictures in the smaller frames from time to time, but that hasn’t actually happened. We’ve changed the wine bottle a few times though!
Looking more closely at those pictures, we have the two 4″x6″ images:
These are both pictures I took while wandering around the Elora Gorge with my pal Ralph early one spring. We had a healthy disregard for the fact that the park was officially closed, and for the rules about not climbing. The first image was taken while wandering in the woods on the trails, the second is taken from the bottom of the gorge (getting down there is much trickier when everything is covered in ice). I believe we rewarded ourselves for all the activity by eventually getting out of the park and making our way to the Old Mill Brewery for a few pints of Elora Irish Ale.
The larger image on that wall is this one:
That’s the sun behind Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, but when we were there everyone just called it “The Reek“. Trish and I climbed to the top of that during our honeymoon–do not believe them when they tell you that the climb to the top is an easy two hours. It took us a lot more than that, and we were in shape at the time–hell, we had been climbing real mountains in Banff. The fact that the climb is not as quick as advertised, nor as easy in many spots, only highlights the madness of the crazy old Catholic ladies who make the climb in bare feet, or on their knees, as part of a pilgrimmage.
The view from the top is worth it, though, so long as there’s no fog. We had to wait around at the top for quite a while before the fog broke and we could look out over the bay. (It’s also as close as I’ll ever get to Grace Kelly.)
Just around the corner, on the other side of the chimney, hangs this:
That’s an image a beach on the creatively named “Camp Island”. It was a wedding present from one of my high school pals. To really understand why you need to take a quick look at this map:
That’s an aerial view of Trout Lake (live link to Google maps). The Google pin is where my house was, growing up–about a ten minute walk from the beach at one end of Trout Lake. The red star marks Camp Island. The green wheel is where the best beach in town is located (we used to go there almost every day in the summer). The purple blotchy thing is approximately where my brother’s house is now.
I grew up near that lake, and spent at least some time in it almost every day that it wasn’t frozen over. My friends in high school lived around that lake. Once we were old enough to have access to boats, we were often on that island. Later on, the island served as a convenient place to have parties and not worry too much about the police wandering in. More recently, the fact that the island is just a quick shot across the water from my brother’s place means that summer visits to him usually result in some time swimming on the island’s beach, or setting up a volleyball net in the water just off the island, or whatever…
So, that picture reminds me of a lot of things about the place where I grew up, and of a lot of good times with people I knew then.
