Remnants: an interview with Jenny Hawkinson

Back in June, I interviewed my talented friend Jenny Hawkinson for an article with Cordella Magazine, an online quarterly featuring women artists and writers,  and the piece has just been published today. Jenny is a visual artist in the downtown east side of Vancouver, the same neighborhood where Andy and I lived in an intentional community for the first few months after we moved to Canada.

In the past, I never had much appreciation of art for its own sake–art sometimes struck me as irrelevant or elitist; an impractical luxury when there are so many “real” issues going on in the world. But I’ve learned a lot from Jenny about the importance of art in cultivating hope, building community, and imagining the kind of world we want to work toward. Her life is a beautiful example of what it looks like to share life with people on the margins of society, and to engage with the brokenness of the world through art.

Click on over to read the interview and see some of Jenny’s beautiful work!

We’ve moved!

          After many unexpected twists, turns, and delays in the construction process, last Monday we moved into our new room! We’re really excited about no longer having a locked door between us and the toilet, having a bird’s eye view of the community, and having a much quieter, ventilated space than we were living in before– now our front door opens onto a peaceful roof space instead of onto a busy alleyway. There are a few things left to be done– we’re hoping to get a roof and a door added to our bathroom soon, but it the meantime I’m enjoying bathing at night under the stars.  So far this is proving to be a really restful little refuge in the slum 🙂 Here’s a virtual tour of our new place:
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A view of our front porch/roof space from our stairwell. Behind the curtain on the left is our bathing area and toilet; in front of our water storage drum is our sink/laundry area.

 

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When they finished building the room, our landlord hung up these rice-filled packets as a sort of blessing.

 

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Having an actual desk and chair is good incentive to sit down and study Hindi!

 

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View out of the window next to our desk: a beautiful neem tree in our neighbors’ courtyard.

 

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  Our kitchen
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And on the other end of the room, our bed, with storage space above and below.

 

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Our ceiling fan, suspended from a bamboo pole overhead.

 

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Looking across the rooftops through our laundry lines and power lines.