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By Adele Wickett
THREE FRIENDS recently hatched the idea of combining
their gifts for a good cause.
Carla Funk recently finished her term as the Poet
Laureate of Victoria. She teaches at UVic, and has published several books
of poetry. For three years, she created poems for city events, and even
wrote the text gracing that giant watering can at the children’s pool
in Beacon Hill Park.
Rose Cowles-Martin began her career as a book designer
for McClelland and Stewart and Penguin Books. Since she moved into
illustration, you can see her delightful paintings dancing through the
pages of many children’s books at our libraries.
Heather Burns teaches piano – but that’s
just the tip of her musical iceberg. She performs at all kinds of Island
venues, and composes much of the music she plays.
The talents of these women continually flow out from
their Christian wellspring, to bless our community as a whole. On February
22, those blessings overflowed in a one-of-a-kind concert aimed at giving
something to Africa as well.
Rhythm Art was advertised as “an evening of
music, canvas and poetry” at Saanich Community Church. But the
tickets bought by the packed-in audience are now benefiting street children
in Kinshasa, Congo – through Bomoyi Ya Sika, which is a
Mennonite Brethren outreach.
 | | Art for Africa at Rhythm Art, featuring (left to right: Carla Funk, Heather Burns, Joey Smith and Kelby MacNayr.) |
This organization provides a home, education,
healthcare and clothing, as well as vocational training for the older
children. They try to reunite children with their families, or to place
them in foster homes; they also operate an orphanage.
Transformed for Rhythm Art, the front of the church
resembled a kind of cozy living room with rugs, lamps, chairs – and a
grand piano. To one side sat an easel, with myriad pots of paint lined up
on a floor-tarp. On the other side, Burns’ back-up band arranged
themselves with their hand-made drums, bass, tin whistle – and a
thing called a hang,
which looks like two woks lying face to face, with a large button on the
top and several big dimples around the top wok. The poet read from a mic in
the middle.
Carla Funk’s heritage is half Amish and half
Mennonite. Her poems, accompanied by Burns improvising on the piano, sang
to common experiences of life, such as mice in the house (“This is
how the word ‘infestation’ begins.”).
One explored the old Amish custom of
‘bundling’: letting a courting couple spend the night in bed in
her parents’ home – firmly stitched into thick, separate
sleeping bags.
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For a Gershwin-loving friend in the audience, Burns
played some of that composer’s music. Her own compositions, such as
‘McKerracher Sunset’ – a piece inspired by the view from
a friend’s condo – spoke to pleasantly local and personal
themes.
And throughout the evening, Rose Cowles-Martin was
rapidly painting . . . soft blues and greens, an image of a guitar, then a
keyboard, a bunch of tulips, with words such as “hear, learn and
praise” curving gracefully around the design. How does she do that?
Chris Burton played a solo on his hang. The ethereal
music, tuned to an eastern ethnic scale, hung hauntingly – but
somehow relaxingly – in the air.
Audience member Avril Martin had heard Burton play this
soothing instrument to a crowd of long-stranded passengers in an airport at
Christmas time.
“Air Canada should employ him for just such
occasions,” she commented.
Creativity wasn’t just confined to the stage. At
intermission, guests were fortified with treats donated by Ooh La La
Cupcakes, and coffee from Level Ground Trading. One could buy crafts from a
Ten Thousand Villages booth, as well as browse information from several
Africa-focused groups.
All told, the evening demonstrated that raising money
for a worthy cause has come a long, long way from the old car-wash.
April 2009
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