Food for Thought

Dusha dobra is Ukrainian for very good, and that’s what customers are saying about the new paint job at the Ukrainian Food Co-op on Winnipeg Street.

Jez Brenwold, a local aerosol artist, is working on painting all four sides of the building.  Unlike the traditional methods of using wax to lay out the pattern and layering the colours, Jez paints the big blooms first and finishes with the contrasting black background. What a bouquet in October after the season’s first snowfall!

The design references the traditional pysanka, or Ukrainian Easter Egg, which you can find inside the store along with old-world garments and tchochkes and their famous homemade pickles, cabbage rolls and perogies.

Around the back of the store flames leap at the strings of sausages dangling over the brazier. The aroma of woodsmoke, garlic and meat is mouthwatering. Such good food to celebrate the end of the growing season.  http://www.ukrainiancoop.ca/

At the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery Victor Cicanski plays with his food. The Regina sculptor has filled the larder with jewel-like jars of pickles, fruits and vegetables, molded in clay and painted in vivid colours borrowed from the Saskatchewan landscape.

                           Prairie Blue With October Pickles

Victor says, “Any human experience is material for art making” and his work glows with love and appreciation for the food we create.

MJM&G ( http://www.mjmag.ca/ ) is showcasing Victor’s witty ceramics alongside a retrospective of his father’s folk art about his early years in Saskatchewan. Frank Cicansky was a blacksmith from Romania who kept the wheels turning on his neighbours’ farms after emigrating to Saskatchewan in 1926.  In his 70s he began to paint, documenting the hard life of farming in the Dustbowl years. Both father and son show a deep appreciation for the land and the grit and gumption of its first farmers.

George Salanick's Farm

"Keep On Going" is the lesson Frank learned as a young man struggling through one of the toughest times in Canada’s history.  Keep on going and be thankful for what you have. 

Happy Thanksgiving!