Dear readers,
I haven’t gotten too personal on this blog thing yet, but I’ll let you a little closer this time.
It’s the day after Christmas and it really wasn’t the happy-clappiest time this year because my family is facing some rough circumstances together. It’s not dire or impossible, we’re not depressed, but there are things in the world worth getting pretty angry and sad about. I’d even go so far as to say that it expresses love to allow those strong feelings to be there and not numb them; they acknowledge the weight of what’s wrong, and they are a sign that something right exists.
Sometimes it’s hard not to sterilize these feelings and find the balance of giving yourself permission to feel, but not be dragged under what you feel. Just like how it’s hard not to brush off kind compliments rather than receive them gracefully, it can be hard to accept compassion sometimes because you (I) don’t want to be pitied, that’s awkward and weak.. and it makes you accept that the thing you don’t want to be real for you is real.
Also, sometimes there’s just too much to explain and it’s tiring to go there. But I really think it is valuable. I am still learning how valuable.

I was thinking about writing a post on grief pre-xmas because I know that is more relate-able than any other tradition for a lot of people around this time. Sad but true…  so why not bring it up? We’re all missing somebody.

Last summer was the 10 year anniversary of my mom’s death, which is a strange fact, and I grieved in a new way. I grieved her as a kid, and a teen, but now I’ve arrived somewhere else and I feel her absence (and in other ways her blessing) here.
The new summertime grief was unexpected, and it only surfaced certain days. But it was real to me, and gradually became more apparent as it lingered. Eventually it found a crack to get out through a song called Spark, and that’s how I knew there was something needing to boil over, it wasn’t clear before. That’s partly what the song is about too. Not just grief and what it does, but other things that get mixed in with that and help/make you see differently.
I made a rough recording on my computer the same night I wrote it and I think the roughness suits it well, like a messy sketch.

Please take a listen:

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Walk another hallway across Bre’s mind……………..
This summer I joined an art collective which is also a book club. Cool right?
We’re called Open Book Art Collective and we are a bunch of visual artists who make artwork and curate shows based on books we read together. I used that song as a part of my piece for our first book which was The Death of A Beekeeper. It was tough to slug through in the summertime: it’s written from the perspective of a guy dying slowly from cancer and exploring the experience of pain (and existence) in his journals. It brought up a lot of material to work with, and I wanted to make something that centered on the necessary physical manifestation of grief, loss, and the human compulsion to memorialize.
Near the start the protagonist receives a letter which is his diagnosis about his cancer, and he decides to burn it before reading it because he would rather not know and just live his life. So, I decided to burn my copy of the book and put the ashes on display to reflect back this idea of irretrievable loss of information that is death, the decay of the body, and the intangible remains that outlast the physical reminders of someone. Someone responded to my piece saying that losing a loved one is a bit like a library burning down.

All the titles of the pieces at the show in October were taken from quotations. Mine was:
“But now I’m beginning to wonder what I have let myself in for, when, for instance, I burned that letter without opening it.” [You will never read this book.]
This is the only line of the book I didn’t burn, and sits on top the little pile of ashes.

A cd player with ‘Spark’ playing was attached to the plinth, forcing a solitary reflective experience of the work.

My artist statement:

To see a photo gallery of the show and the other artists’ fantastic work, click here.

Also, we were just accepted for a second exhibition of this show in a new gallery space. Details will be announced soon! You can keep in touch with us at www.openbookartcollective.com.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and please don’t keep your grief all to yourself.
-Bre

I’ve been art-ing up a storm in the last two weeks and I wanna tell you all about it..!

   I decided to do a portrait of Nelson Mandela to reflect on his life. I watched a few documentaries, listened to what his grandchildren and Obama say about him and thought about people who spend years in prison. I also watched The Hurricane and am seriously considering trying to get a pen pal with a life sentence.

“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.” – Nelson Mandela

I also did some Christmas card illustrations:
I’m not sure if it was the fact that I spent a lot of time inside, but I definitely giggled to myself a few times while drawing the mermaid and squirrel ones.
………which are for sale by the way for $2 or a deal for a bunch. (email me)

Since I’m on a photo-doc roll here’s a commissioned painting I also finished on tuesday. I would love to do more portraits of musicians. Watch it grow…..
And finally:

Now to finish my christmas gifts………..
Cheers,
-B

Hey.
I will be selling artwork, EPs and singing at this next weekend:

check out the wonderland of venders, they would love to help you give awesome gifts to your friends/family/lovers:

Today is my nephew’s first birthday.
He is my first nephew and that is only the beginning of why he’s a special little man. His nickname is Jay and I made this for him:

Hi. Right now I´m in Malaga, Spain and I just had a whole week to draw and write while my travelling buddy recovered from Pneumonia. We didn´t get out much, and she said a lot of interesting things when the fever took over her brain. I wrote down some things she said, and I also wrote down this story and made some pictures for it so you would know that it´s real.

In mid September I took a boat from Ireland to France with my friend Steph.
I saw every side of the seas holding in Ireland; Rosslare was the last edge. I waved goodbye with thought bubbles of when I would be back, and breathed in the wind messing up my hair. I thought about how the wind blows between borders and belongs to no certain nation, and also how hard it would be to untangle my hair since I forgot my hairbrush.

We hopped trains above and below ground until we hit Paris, stumbling out of the station into the road blocks for construction and a huge scenery change from Ireland´s 47 shades of green.

Steph and I then had to figure out how to navigate the beehive subway system below the city in order to get to the apartment where we were staying that night. We weren’t sure if it was better to take a bus or what direction we were supposed to be going, we didn’t even have the vague clues written down about how to get to the address. All we could do was feel around the air for free internet. Eventually we found a fast food place we could connect at. We got into our email and made some guesses as to how to get to that night’s home and set off again for more time in transit.

On the train I squeezed myself and my big backpack as pragmatically close as I could to a man with a muzzled German Shepherd. In looking down at the dog I noticed that there was something missing from the floor.

“Steph where’s the guitar?”
My mind flew back to the fast food place, where I put it down last. We used curse words and jumped off the train as soon as it stopped to head back the opposite way, but I doubted the guitar would still be there with so many people passing through.
I got around the corner and talked to the cashiers with hand signals and air-guitar gestures, but they never saw my Taylor and didn’t want to talk to me. Men were selling flowers outside, I thought about asking them, but I was pretty deflated. No one saw anything and it would be pointless to report to police. Again we found our way through the maze of tunnels, got lost, got rained on, got help and were lead to our home street by a lady from a laundry mat.

The next day we saw fantastic things and ate amazing food, but I was feeling quiet. My mom gave me that guitar when I was 11. It wasn’t for my birthday or any occasion, but I clearly remember the day I was pretending to know how to play my brother’s ukulele, and my mom just looked at me and said, “Hmm.” And then she brought home a little Taylor acoustic that smelled amazing. It’s weird when I think about it now. I think the only song I learned was leaving on a jetplane for years, I wasn’t interested in music until after my mom passed away, and didn’t play much at all until university.

I had hoped to do some song writing on this trip and so I was pretty bummed about not doing that, along with the sentimental loss of one of the few gifts I have from my mom still. This just sucked all around, so I asked God to pry it out of the hands of whoever had it and bring it back, and in exchange He could have all the credit for the story. I felt enough faith that if God is as awesome as I think He is then this shouldn’t be hard for him, but I didn’t expect anything to happen.
The next day passed and I kept looking out at crowds imagining the thief and how I’d tackle them to the ground.

*   *   *   *   *

My room mates were getting into bed that night and I decided to check facebook quickly because it had been a while. The usual social banter popped up and some guy sent me a friend request. I was going to just ignore it but I saw he was from Paris and I wondered if I forgot meeting him, so I sent him a message asking how he knew me. It was after midnight and I got a message back right away.

“Vouz avez perdu une guitare ressament? Oui ou non?”
I threw up my hands in shock and asked our french-speaking host to translate. This guy found my guitar and took it home because he knew someone else would steal it right away. He said he has two guitars of his own and that he would hate to lose them, and gave his number so we could figure out when to meet. I briefly talked to him (with the hope that he wouldn’t ask for a ransom fee) and we set a meeting time for the next day. Obviously, I was thrilled and so surprised that this would happen to me.

The next day we met Anas Nazareth, who happens to be a magician. He came to Paris years ago from Morocco to get a degree in engineering, but now enjoys working with magic much more than computers. I tried to buy him a coffee but he insisted on paying for us instead (which seemed to me to be the opposite to what should be happening). We all got along right away and laughed a lot, and I offered to sing him a song as it was the least I could do to show my gratitude.

We waited for the rain to let up and I was curious if he actually knew any good magic tricks, so I asked him to show us something, and he didn’t mind. He pulled out a coin that disappeared and reappeared all over the place, and also did some ridiculous card tricks that Steph and I were confused by.
We had planned to pack in the sightseeing that day but we ended up hanging out all afternoon with Anas because it felt more important. He showed us his favourite shisha cafe by the Moulin Rouge where we sat and shared hookah and more stories, and it was one of my favourite days of this trip.

Eventually it was time to say goodbye after talking about a ton of things deep and shallow. Anas Nazareth is one of multiple beautiful, generous, intriguing and unlikely people I´ve met on this trip who I feel so privileged to have any time with at all. As he walked us to the bus stop he said he doesn’t believe in coincidence but that certain people are put in our path for a reason, and we need to be open to whatever those reasons could be. I agree, and want to try to live a life that´s  hospitable and attentive to these sorts of chance/not chance meetings.

Another small detail of this story: the red airplane tag with my name and address I had put on my guitar case had ripped off in Ireland and the only reason Anas could find me on facebook was because I absent-mindedly slapped on a small luggage sticker that I didn´t know what to do with. It was half peeled off and just had my first and last name, clinging on to the case for dear life.

*    *    *

If you´re curious what Anas looks like or where he´s performing these days, you can find out here.

Hello, I`m in Switzerland. I didn`t plan on ending up here, but I`m glad I did. I`ve made a few split second decisions on this trip that have all worked out quite well. I left Vancouver on September 1st to travel around Europe until the end of October, beginning with two weeks in Ireland, the country which lured my friend Steph and I into this whole adventure. Here is a little sketch from our first day in Ireland just north of Dublin. We were exhausted from a long journey and basically collapsed on a rock when we saw the Irish sea for the first time and sat there for a while taking in the freshness of the breeze and all the time ahead of us. I dipped my finger in the sea to mark it on my drawing:

I am half Irish but know barely anything of my family roots but have been thinking a lot about that and craving more connection to all that knowledge and history and character, and before I left Canada I felt that I would be taking something back with me somehow, just from seeing Ireland with my own eyes. I had this idea come into my mind one day to take sort of impressions and rubbings of different surfaces there, and so I brought my sketchbook around most places looking for interesting words in relief, or wallpaper, symbols, anything. Here are a few pictures of my favourite ones, to share a few of my impressions of Ireland with you.

These are sketches I did in Shoot the Crows pub in Sligo, the town where my McDaniel family is from. I met up with a friend of a friend there who happens to also be a visual artist and musician in the Celtic band Dervish. He took us to this hidden place called the Fairy Glen, a muddy forest trail with dripping rock walls covered in ferns and vines. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote a poem about this place and used to spend time there. This was where my sneakers stopped being white. I have so much more to say about Sligo and other counties, and our times at the pubs and the fantastic musicians that sit around drinking and jamming, and how I was talked into singing and they all played with me, but for now I can only leave you with these sketches and marks..

Ireland is truely a magical place and we met so many beautiful people that were so kind to us. I actually hoped to get into trouble because I knew that it would result in making new friends who would drop anything if you were in a jam. I also may have found out that my great grandfather is the missing branch of a family tree that has been searching for us for years. I talked to an old man in a bar and one thing lead to another and later that night I met up with relatives face to face. I have to do some more research about my great uncles and aunts but if this is true then I am related to a famous Irish country singer named Maisie McDaniel and many other musicians throughout the family. I always thought only my mom’s side was musical. Isn`t life wild? Once you start digging it`s hard to stop, because you see that we`re all so deep and there`s treasure everywhere.

I got to play at four festivals this summer.
An exciting one was Khatsahlano which was a great old time playing on 4th, walking a red carpet in a fashion show (I’m not good at heels), and seeing lots of fun local bands. A highlight would have to be when the Vicious Cycles played a theremin and then lit it on fire, and finally seeing Rich Hope and his Evil Doers. I also got quoted in a Georgia Straight Article about it, check it out.

Khatsahlano Festival on 4th July 13, 2013

A lady wanted pictures with Steph’s flaming red accordion. I wasn’t actually angry. July 13, 2013

Char’s Landing Street Festival August 4th was also very memorable. I was invited to play there after playing at Joyfest in Kits with Faith Numada and Steph Ratliff (a group we affectionately and existentially call COMB). We met some beautiful people and had some sweet spontaneous jam sessions throughout the 2 days, even on the boat with a famous fiddle player Faith snuck up on. It felt really right to be traveling with a car full of instruments piled to the roof.

jamming by the water after performing at the street festival, working on a new song (photo courtesy of Chris harder, more of his work at www.chrishardercreative.com)

I also got some drawing in, which I’ve been missing but want to get back into.

Sketching at the music festival, this lady has a gorgeous heart and spills it out in her poetry, music and the causes she passionately shares about.

Here’s Glen playing the sitar while is lovely partner shares her poetry, it was beautiful to see them together and getting to jam with them late into the night.

Two more Vancouver shows and then I’ll be off to Europe ! I’m planning on doing lots of writing and drawing there.. it’s definitely time for me to fly away for a while and see new things. Can’t wait !

-Bre

Betty Chaba (my mom) with Sweet Grass. Date unknown. She’s the one with the longest hair.

Weird, yesterday I was thinking about how my mom was involved in the music scene in Kits in the 70s/80s and thought maybe I should mention that when I play on 4th this saturday..
and then I found out my name’s in a Georgia Straight article that starts off like this:

“Considering the spiritual forefathers of the 50-plus bands that will be hitting the streets of Kitsilano this Saturday (July 13), it’s hard not to love the very idea of the Khatsahlano! Music + Art Festival.”

I really shouldn’t be mentioned in this article as I’m one of the smaller names on the bill, but I seem to be getting unexpectedly blessed all over the place recently…

Read the full article here.
-Bre

PS
Among other ways that I’ve been on a search to discover my family roots, I’m on the hunt to find the issue of the Georgia Straight where my mom’s on the cover. Luckily I’ve met someone who wants to help me get into the archives.. More on that later.

This Saturday July 13th I get to play at the Khatsahlano Festival on 4th in Vancouver. It’s expected to draw 100,000 people to the neighbourhood, and is a collaboration with the Kits BIA, the Peak radio station, Music BC and a bunch of artist initiatives including the Waldorf crew.

How did Bre get this gig?
Back in March I played at a fundraiser for the Kits Neighbourhood House at the historic Hollywood Theatre.

There were auditions for this event but I was bummed to find out I couldn’t get work off to try out, but a friend passed on the organizer’s email so I could send her some music on the off chance I could get in that way, and I did! There were about 15 artists playing that night and there was a vote with the winner getting a spot to play at Khatsahlano, and I was voted in.

Now my name is on a poster all over Vancouver (you’ll find it on there, just squint a bit):

So come find me playing on stage at Cypress and 4th Ave this Saturday at 11:30am ! Zulu Records will be selling my EPs and I’ll be stickin around to see a bunch of awesome bands after such as: The Vicious Cycles, Rich Hope and his Evil Doers, and The Pack AD so you should too.

I love Vancouver.
-Bre