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The Editor’s Desk: Oops, I did it again

I just might have purchased another half-dozen paintings by local artists. Where to put them?

The calendar tells me that spring is officially here, so at the Journal office I marked the occasion with a little ritual I call “the putting away of the snow shovel”.

The snow shovel normally lives in a room in the Journal building called the morgue, which sounds grim, but has a long pedigree when it comes to newspapers. It’s the name given to the space where back copies of the newspaper used to be stored, and dates back to a time long before online publication, when it was crucial to keep hard copies of the paper for reference.

The morgue at the Journal presumably served that purpose at one time, hence the name, but no papers have been stored there for years. It’s the oldest part of a very old building, and while other areas have been refurbished and modernized over the decades, with the original floors and walls and ceilings covered over or closed in, the morgue remains stubbornly frozen in time, with the ghosts of long-gone windows and doors still haunting the walls and the remains of a vanished chimney in one corner.

Despite my fondness for old buildings and spaces, it’s not an easy room to love, especially since the memorable occasion when I opened the door to show the room to a visitor and was greeted by the squeal of a bat which had (appropriately enough, given the name) sought sanctuary in the morgue and didn’t appreciate being disturbed. It put a swift end to that particular tour of the office, believe you me; seldom have I closed a door so promptly and decisively.

Since then I’ve made sure to keep the door shut, apart from semi-annual incursions involving the snow shovel and other odds and ends stored in there. For this reason alone, it’s not a space where one could (or would want to) hang artwork, a subject which was much on my mind earlier this week. You see, I might — just might — have ended up the happy owner of six new paintings, courtesy of being the high bidder on same during the recent Anonymous Art Show at the Ashcroft HUB.

I’ve written before about how I seem to have acquired an astonishing number of paintings by local artists, or of local scenes. That makes it sound as if it happened by accident, which of course it didn’t. I buy them because I like them, but then I have to find somewhere to put them. My house is no good: with more than 6,000 books at home, much of the wall space is taken up with bookcases. Fortunately, even without the morgue, the Journal building has plenty of blank walls, and after picking up my new acquisitions I spent a very pleasant time figuring out where they should go.

One of the volumes in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time series of novels is entitled Books Do Furnish a Room. They certainly do (see my reference to more than 6,000 books above, which amply furnish every room in my house), and I have to say that artworks also serve that purpose. A stroll around the Journal office now shows 22 original artworks, which — in addition to filling up a lot of otherwise vacant wall space — cheer things up immensely.

Careful curating has also produced some happy results. Four different paintings, by four different artists and purchased at three separate shows, make up an accidental themed landscape sequence. There are several cheerful critters, including cats, an owl, an armadillo, a raccoon, even an octopus. Two paintings feature dramatic swirls of green and gold and make a happy pair.

Spring is here, and I’m pleased that the colour and life abounding outside is reflected on the walls of the Journal office. Just not in the morgue, where I’ll leave the snow shovel to its own devices, hopefully for a good long period of time. Perhaps a bat or two might flutter down to keep it company; with the door shut, I’ll never know.



editorial@accjournal.ca

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