Woke up to chainsaws, diesel, cigarette smoke and the death of trees. Cracking branches splitting my heart. Tidiness destroying wildness. Shade, shelter and vitality crushed and chipped and blown into the back of a truck. Beauty disappearing in favour of efficiency. Another patch of pavement because, clearly, we need more.
— heidi kalyani, 2018
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line
Every time I saw her she told me her heart ached — though, of course, she never said so in words. Born on a cold corner in Winnipeg, watching siblings multiple on the Prairies, growing up too fast on a train ride to Ontario — her father dead before he could fetch them at the station. The play of her hands in her lap, her not-so-gentle smack a “love-pat”. A serious oldest sister, the only one with work during the long depression, waiting for marriage, waiting for children, already forty-six when her baby turned five. Patience and perseverance knitted and twirled into dog blankets, shawls and slippers in colours all longing for spring. Widowed early — outliving family, dogs and flimsy tin houses. Creases at the edges of her lips, a rough tremor in her voice, a distance in her eyes like waiting for things to die.
— heidi kalyani, 2018
from the *nothing is black and white* project: illustration created out of meditation with a single unbroken line