SULLIVAN AND BROCHU

Down a quiet street in little Portugal, an unassuming exterior belies the wonderful interior of Neil Brochu and Derek Sullivan's home and studio.  The previous owners of this two-story semi-detached had a penchant for covering rather than removing, making the transformation from double granny flat to elegant three-bedroom home an exercise in excavating.  Brochu, coordinator for collections and conservation for the city of Toronto’s museum services, and Sullivan, visual artist, have the skills needed to create an environment that is both refined and relaxed.  Peeling away layers like wall to wall carpeting and a makeshift second floor kitchen to find the Edwardian bones intact underneath, they also discovered a mint 1940’s linoleum “rug” as well as preserved newspapers and packaging, from the mid 1940s, insulating the walls of the back porch. 

 It was the unique banister post that gave hints of the house’s potential, Neil Brochu explained.  And in taking the house back to when this original feature was installed, they added historic details like push button light switches (CSA approved) and applied Farrow and Ball paint to their walls using a large brush in the traditional technique so as to attain the right texture.  This is not to imply that the house is “precious” or striving to be a museum. By leaving swirling plaster ceilings and adding modern artwork and furnishings, the place is a perfect synthesis of old and new.   The pottery of Harlan House echoes throughout, from the bathroom sink to the dinner service to stunning sculptural pieces atop the mantle, creating a cohesive nod in his signature HH celadon glaze.

With the Dahlias ready to be moved outside for the summer, the garden will soon be as stunning as the inside.  Last year’s praise from a neighbourhood nonna (knocking on the door to make her point) attests to the green thumbs inside.

SUMMER READS

"Of course there’s something there; unfortunately, there’s always something ‘there.’ Something you will one day be sorry you saw."

 - Mary Gaitskill, from Veronica

What could be more exciting than discovering an author who truly resonates with you?  When, after reading just one book, you know that your summer is going to be spent consuming ever word they have ever written. 

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill is a story about an unusual friendship between two women, one young and beautiful and one old and dying of Aids. With precise yet dreamy prose Gaitskill is uncompromising when it comes to writing about the complexity of the human experience. Cruelty, empathy, beauty, sorrow and ugliness all get their due as the characters in this novel search for the space and strength to exist within their own contradictions. 

Today I started on a borrowed copy of Because They Wanted To- a collection of twelve short stories.

What can I say? Read it and read it all!

- Lisa DiQuinzio

WAR GAMES : TULARE VS GLOTTENBERG

 My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few

 Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,

 Of such hard matter does thou entertain

So begins the 58-page rule book-cum-manifesto drafted by Alberto Figuira Jardim to govern his campaigns of lead soldiers in the field, tin planes in the sky, and wooden ships on the pond. Though both a lawyer as well as a professor of English and philosophy, Mr. Jardim clearly had much time on his hands. Beginning in 1915, he molded and painted, named and numbered, thousands of soldiers and brought them into action on a massive battlefield on the grounds of his summer house, the Quinta da Estrela in the village of Caniço, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, a thousand kilometers from anywhere.  “You didn’t watch television in those days,” explained his grandson Miguel. At a time when Europe was convulsing with the bloodshed of the First World War, Alberto Jardim created his own scenes of valor and devastation, as the brave young sons of two imaginary foes – the nations of Glottenberg and Tulare – fought each other tooth and nail in the imaginary land of Mandolia. Keeping fastidious notes of the day’s casualties, and plotting strategies for the next day’s campaigns, Mr. Jardim laid waste to wooden villages with hand-made bombs dropped from planes that zipped along wire lines. When Mr. Jardim moved Tularese forces to the outskirts of a particularly ornate town at the corner of his property, and then allowed it to be burnt to the ground by the forces of Glottenberg as they beat a hasty retreat, his grandson demanded to know how he could be so reckless with something that had taken him many weeks to build. “Ah, my boy,” he exclaimed, “but that is the stupidity of war.”  

From the collection of guest contributor T. Jardim