Senior EDMONTON
May 2014
INSIDE:
Your Senior Connection in the Capital Region
Volume 24, No. 8
25-26 Coffee Break 6 Opinion 28 On the Town 11 Health 29 Pets 20 Homes 30-31 Classifieds 27 Leisure Special Section: Great Escapes … Page 15
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Seniors use books to create art
Harry Adams and Shirley Parker stand beside “A Mystic Return to Their Origin”, a sculpture they helped make as resident artists at River Ridge Seniors Community. Submitted photo
Sculpture now on display at University of Alberta By Susan Jones Finding the strength to rip apart books was hard for resident artists at River Ridge Seniors Community. Throughout the process, paper dust swirled in the air and the books themselves seemed to cling to the old pages and to the words that were printed inside. The purpose of all this tearing was to create a sculpture from the repurposed pieces of books. Some 50 seniors contributed to the project, and the resulting work of art is called A Mystic Return to Their Origin.
The residents take part in art classes and collaborative projects in the studio at River Ridge and making this sculpture took close to four months. “The art classes are not structured, but instead, we have an open studio. This project came about because I had contributed a sculpture to a show titled The Book as Weapon of Change I at the University of Alberta, under Professor Royden Mills,” said Carly Greene, who works as the River Ridge Seniors Community resident artist. As part of the artistic process,
Groovy
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several of the seniors took part in a discussion panel with university students. Together they discussed the changing role of books in society and they talked about the problem of what to do with old books when they are no longer needed. “It was a really interesting discussion about the destruction of books and the relationship people had to them. “For the seniors, it was also about their approach to contemporary art,” Greene said. River Ridge resident Shirley
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Parker was still pondering those questions in mid-April as the sculpture was installed in the foyer of the University’s Rutherford Library. “Someone else pulled them apart. It was too hard for me, but everyone found it hard because they made books to last, in my lifetime. It bothered me quite a bit because I’m an avid reader and have been all my life. “I like having old books around me because you can always back track through them and find out things and remember,” Parker said. See BOOKS, Page 3
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