culture vulture

A friend and I visited our province’s capital, Fredericton last Sunday. My friend — who has a ‘slight’ obsession with Henry David Thoreau [to put it mildly] — wanted to visit a photo exhibition; «24 trees at Walden Pond».  She wanted to go this particular Sunday, as the photographer was going to be there, himself, and she knows him. I tugged along for the outing, the photos, to visit the Beaverbrook Gallery and see the painting by Salvador Dali, Santiago El Grande. Not sure why I really wanted that … just because I knew they had it there so I could say that I’d seen it.

We started out with lunch as soon as we got there. Had a scrumptious meal and talked about fountain pens and ink. Then we moseyed over to the gallery, which as more or less next door to the restaurant. Now, it turned out they had the grand opening of a new wing, so there were line-ups … very crowded … but we got in fairly quick anyway, since it was free. The grand opening, with speeches and all that, took place in the  very room where the tree photos were hung, so we didn’t see much of them, but we had a great experience anyway. They had a group of indigenous people there that put on a fabulous show … dances … drums … chanting. They were telling a story about the Saint John River and the river itself was flowing right outside the windows.

My friend got a chat with the photographer so all in all it turned out to be a great day. She’s going down to Walden Pond on Friday for some project she’s working on, so she’ll get to see those trees in real live instead.