Alan Skeoch

Author: terraviva

  • EPISODE 290 IMAGINATION REQUIRED…MY NEXT WOODEN QUILTS…DO NOT KNOW WHEN

    EPISODE 290   IMAGINATION REQUIRED…MY NEXT WOODEN QUILTS…DO NOT KNOW WHEN


    alan skeoch
    March 2021


    INTERESTED ?  MAYBE ?

    There seems to be interest in the Wooden Quilts so here are a couple of our idea pictures.  Projects not even started.
    For those bored
    by the subject you know what to do.  Delete or Do not open.  Easy.

    This old house, Northwest of Ospringe, Ontario, is a project I look forward to working on.  The house will be difficult due to the
    artistic brick work which I may ignore.  Look closely at the house.  Perhaps you can explain why there is a doorway to nowhere
    on the second floor.

    Ray  Clough owned a nearby farm.   I hired him to re-roof our farm house.  He did such a good job
    that he asked if he could live there.  He was not joking.  Now he is gone and we have lost another rural
    eccentric.   How did he manage to hammer sheets of green aluminum roofing in place while winter winds
    were blowing I will never understand.  He must have had help but the only person I ever saw on the job
    was RAY.  I devoted an earlier Episode to him.  My Cousin Helen and her
    husband Bill live nearby.  Knew Ray.  As dod my friend Rooter (Robert Root) .  Maybe they 
    even know why there is  door on he second floor of the old farm house above … a door that leads nowhere. 

    alan skeoch

     

    Below the farm house is my truck loaded with Black Cherry logs en route to John and Eleanor Calder’s saw mill.  Eventually some of the milled
    lumber became our dining room table.






    BEFORE AND AFTER

    HERE Marjorie is holding two images.   AFTER AND BEFORE.   As close a replication I could assemble using 1” (One Inch) as my
    base number.  One inch…the clue.

    Yellow moon was once part of a rope bed, Roof and  verandah cover were once a piece of horizontal barn siding.  Barn was lath from a
    wrecked 19th century home.  Smoke was a piece of aromatic cedar as are the fields.  Backboard was ancient 18” slab of white pine
    distressed by time.   The model is a former general store and post office in a small village north of Orangevile, Ontario…Hockley Valley.

    And Below is another project.  In this case a farm on the road north to Collingwood.   It was suddenly abandoned
    due to a family dispute I was told.  Everything left in the buildings although vandalized when we got permission
    from a neighbour to walk through the farm.  When I do this picture I hope to capture the gap toothed barn siding
    which really tells the story.  Perhaps the even the farm post box, aslant as in the photo.  Too sad for anyone
    to want in their house so maybe I will make it cheery by putting full siding on the barn.  When?  We’ll see.

    alan


    Just too many projects.

    alan skeoch
    March 22, 2021

  • EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999 (BIGGER PICTRE, MORE KIDS)



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: Fwd: EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999
    Date: March 22, 2021 at 5:03:28 PM EDT
    To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>




    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999
    Date: March 22, 2021 at 4:22:10 PM EDT
    To: Marjorie Skeoch <marjorieskeoch@gmail.com>, “alan.skeoch@bell.net” <alan.skeoch@bell.net>, John Wardle <john.t.wardle@gmail.com>, Parkdale Collegiate Alumni Association <info@parkdalecialumni.com>, “marilyn.holmes” <marilyn.holmes@rogers.com>


    EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


    alan skeoch
    March 2021


    Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
    possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
    thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
    single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

    By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
    photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
    I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
    wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
    is a song about that.



    Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
    It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

    alan skeoch
    March 22, 2021



  • EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999

    EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


    alan skeoch
    March 2021

    Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
    possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
    thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
    single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

    By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
    photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
    I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
    wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
    is a song about that.



    Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
    It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

    alan skeoch
    March 22, 2021

  • EPISODE 292 MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDSLE C. I….1999

    EPISODE 292   MY LAST CLASS AT PARKDALE C. I….1999


    alan skeoch
    March 2021

    Time has a habit of slipping by.  One year to the next.  No way to slow it down except
    possibly by this current pandemic.   Isolation slows us all down which is not a bad
    thing.  Gives us time to asses our lives and maybe discover what is  really important…the
    single grain of wheat among the chaff as it were.

    By chance I came across this picture of my last class.  Our union, OSSTF, send a
    photographer to see if I was laying down on the job.  Retiring before really retiring.
    I was caught…lying horizontal on my desk while my class did whatever they
    wanted to do.  Guess what they decided?  They decided to lean on me!  I think there
    is a song about that.



    Now take a moment to look at each face.  By now these kids are 22 years older.  Most are likely married with kids of their own.
    It is comforting to feel that our country is in such good hands.

    alan skeoch
    March 22, 2021

  • EPISODE 291 STUD FEE

    EPISODE 291   STUD FEE

    alan skeoch
    March 2021



    I do not remember his name.  But I do remember the purpose of his visit.  About a decade or
    so ago a wealthy horse owner approached Marjorie at an art show we were doing.  Art shows are
    not big deals.  Often there are no sales but lots of visitors.  Hardly worth doing sometimes when
    we considered the time involved and lugging 15 or 20 wooden quilts to a gallery…then sitting around
    waiting for whatever might happen.   Art is a very subjective thing.  Hated or loved.  But rarely purchased.
    I am not even sure I want to sell often.  Like selling myself.

    “Would Alan consider making a wood quilt that I can use in place of a stud fee?”
    “Stud fee?”
    “Yes, I have a mare who is about to be serviced.  Money for the stud fee is not
    a big issue with the stallion owner.   He is comfortable.”
    “Maybe, Alan will do it.  He likes oddball projects.  Does his own thing.”
    “Only issue is size…not too large…will hang in the stable”

    Flattering. Imagine being commissioned to create a stud fee.  My dad was no longer around but
    were he alive I know how he would have reacted.  He was a gambler.  A horse race gambler.
    He rubbed shoulders with the big shots, the horse owners, who paid extra admission to the snobbish
    Club House seating at the track.  If dad had been around he would have got a lot more
    for my Stud Fee that’s for sure.  He would wait until the transaction was concluded then he
    would hit with a whisper.  “You couldn’t see your way clear to lending me a few dollars, could
    you  I left my wallet at home.  Pay you tomorrow.”  Or maybe something different like “my car
    broke down…transmission…need the car to move my sons Wooden Quilts from a gallery in
    Haliburton.  Can you spare a bit of cash.  Do not have enough on me right now.”
    I know dad would have made much of the Stud Fee.


    I did not charge much.  The horse owner never mentioned a Kentucky stable or the fact the stallion owner
    was “really comfortable”.  I thought the Wood Quilt was destined for some poor guy who kept a stallion
    and was living hand to mouth.  Like Dad.  So the stud fee was minuscule.  

    This was the only time
    I ever made a picture for a sexual act.  That was something to brag about.

    We met the horse owner at the track later on.  He said the stud fee was just great.  Now hanging in
    the tack room at the Kentucky thoroughbred stable.   

    alan skeoch





    POST SCRIPT


    POST SCRIPT

    A lot of my visitors at the art shows were kids.  Probably because young minds are more flexible than the minds of more sophisticated
    people.  I believe The young mind can find joy far easier than the older mind.  Acid criticism is just not yet fully developed in a young mind.
    Juried art shows are avoided.   I make the pictures because I want to make them.  Not because I want a lot of criticism.   I am too old
    for that.

    Once I was asked to conduct a workshop at a museum down near Simcoe so  I cut out a bunch of cardboard shapes and had
    my audience of 10 or 12 make their own wooden quilts out of paper.  Some of he audience were children.  
    We had a lot of fun that evening.