Onward
Cracks are opening everywhere.
For three days a week I’m a personal support worker who provides care to thirteen lovely and sometimes difficult people. Each navigates their own stage of disrepair and dementia, all are present, alive and aware, palpably and engagingly human. PSW-ing is exhausting but satisfying work, shockingly underpaid and under supported in this for-profit health care world. After 2.5 months I know that after two shifts in a row I need a day of books and quiet, to repair and regenerate. Today is one of those gifts; nothing scheduled, wide open to the world and full of patience.
The cracks began to open during Covid pandemic and lockdowns. Old bonds were broken, new ones formed, but differently. “I broke up with my best friend. Now we’re REAL best friends.” – written on my studio wall in answer to the question, what is different for you, after Lockdowns? “I quit my job. I found out that I was the fragile one, not my wife. I realized that the system has to change. It doesn’t support people….”. Life as it was before the Pandemic is …gone.
It’s raining and windy here, turkey vultures teeter in the sky over Gage Park. Dog walkers and families travel south down my street to play there, tent people wheel their possessions north, away from the waterlogged encampments, towards the possibility of food. This is our community – a block that way is a football stadium, two blocks that way are rows and circles of tents where people have been doing their best to survive through winter storms. My PSW wage keeps me safe from rent insecurity, just, and artists are survivors. I don’t lose sleep to fear, but on this thoughtful day as I watch the cracks appear out there I know we’re asking ourselves what we actually need in the world. Have I met the friends I could survive a winter with, in a tent, and still find laughter?
I made soup today as I visited with an old friend whose heart has just been cracked open. Turmeric root, turnip, yam and chicken, bay leaves, star anise and cloves – for my friend who is far away and in grief. It’s good comfort soup, steaming beside me as the sun comes out, as light pours through the windows. I’m thinking of him, sending my love.
In late 2020 I tore up a big piece of paper into eleven pieces, and made each piece into a painting about connection, in defiance of isolation. I used a porcelain coffee set as my central imagery, then discovered that the set had been made in a Czechoslovakian village factory that had been confiscated from its Jewish owners by the Third Reich, between 1939 and 1944. There’s a 2024 film about beautiful porcelain art made in defiance of war and aggression, called Porcelain War. It is set in Ukraine.
One of these I made pieces belongs to my dear Ukrainian friend. I am now offering the remaining ten at my cost (mostly framing), as an act of defiance in uncertain times. Ten percent of the proceeds from these pieces and prints will be donated to The Good Shepherd, a respected Hamilton organization who works with housing-compromised people in my community.
Follow me on Instagram (Keira McArthur) for photos and info for each piece, and the new prices. I’m offering an instalment option for up to a year to anyone who wishes, term of their own choosing. An essay on the WWII porcelain factory story will be included, as well as a digital copy of the composite image (below)- a reconstructed piece that includes all eleven paintings. Direct message or email me if you want to reserve any of these pieces, or are interested in unframed prints.
I feel very strongly that we can lean in here, and find ways to connect and support each other. We can trust what Leonard Cohen wrote in his anthem, about cracks.