December 2001

This box was the first one for which I began to spend a lot of time making gifts which were meant to be taken and exchanged by the curious.  It was also when I began to include bits of text to accompany each gift, a theme that I would repeat often in the future. However, most significantly, it was when I began to collaborate and commune with my dead grandmother through the medium of her poetry. 

My grandmother was a well known and prolific Canadian poet, a two time Governer General Award winner and an Officer of the Order of Canada.  She published many books and has appeared in dozens of anthologies, the BC book prize for poetry is named in her honor.

I constructed the box at my friend’s house on Quadra Island one fall weekend.  The symbols on the exterior are a mix of Norse, and my own made-up runes, which can signify whatever you choose them to be.  I gathered dozens of film canisters and inserted a peculiar assortment of trinkets and gee-gaws inside of them.  A sample appears in the photos below.  I then gathered up one of my grandmother’s books of poetry, titled “The Phases of Love”, and set about dismembering it in order to include glimpses of her words inside the gift canisters.  A touch of colour was added to each parchment and then they were sealed up. 

The whole experience left me greatly satisfied and alert to the world.  I felt a deep connection to my grandmother (who had died four years earlier); a person whom I had often considered an amusing nuisance when she was alive.  I never went in for poetry all that much, and I will confess to having a paucity of interest in her works, having read almost none of her vast catalogue. 

The volume that I had cut apart was signed by her, in it she simply wrote “Love to my grandson at Christmas, 1987.  Love Dee”. The closeness I felt to her through this symbolic act, of physically cutting to shreds her work and words, and arranging the fragments. This completed my relationship with her, we were good friends now.

Otherwise, the box went up and came down without a hitch, I took no notes, but do recall that one of the film canisters was returned with a note and some chocolate inside (which I did not eat).  I also spoke to an older (late 60's) lady who lived at the corner and apparently enjoyed the offering boxes.  She told me that another woman who lived up the street had put the box up.  What!  Imposter!  Although through questioning it was revealed that she merely ASSUMED it was this other woman.  Therefore, no one was claiming my work for their own.  Why would they.

Box Installed

Offering content examples.  Bits of Grandma's poems.