Interviews
Consie PowellSome Thoughts on My Approach with Art and Writing for Canoeman JoeWhen I think of how canoes are central to my life, it sometimes amazes me to remember that I never even paddled a canoe until my honeymoon in 1972. Rog and I paddled a borrowed aluminum canoe on a fantastic September trip, and needless to say, I was hooked.Over the years, while paddling True Blue, our 17’ Grumman aluminum canoe bought secondhand from an outfitter in Michigan’s upper peninsula, we’d occasionally spy, up on a shore somewhere, a wood and canvas canoe. A couple of times, we stopped and went up for a close look. Now, THAT was a canoe!In 1986 Rog, daughter Virginia, and I drove to Maine for a scientific conference, and knowing that we’d be only an hour or so from Old Town (the home of the Old Town Canoe factory), we “just happened” to have our canoe-carrying pads along. When we drove away from Old Town, we had an 18’ Old Town Guide canoe strapped onto the top of our truck. We’d bought a “second”, which made her affordable, but she was a “first” for us. We named her Calypso (after the Calypso orchid), and she was a classic wood canoe with cedar ribs and planking, but had clear fiberglass on her hull, rather than the traditional canvas. She was gorgeous, handled like a dream, and carried the three of us and our gear, plus a dog or two, on many short and long trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. We were hooked.In 1992, we added a second wood canoe. Over the previous years, I had found that I could carry Calypso when necessary, but could not lift her to flip her up to my shoulders. I was working on research for a book about the canoe country, and needed to be able to get out and around by myself. Arethusa (named for the Arethusa orchid) was a 20th anniversary gift from Rog. She was 15’ long, broad of beam, and at around 55 pounds, liftable by me. Arethusa enabled me to get out in the wilds and sketch in the field. But that didn’t happen right away, because she arrived with a hole in her hull. When Rog first began his search for a smaller canoe for me, he inquired of Ely canoe maker Joe Seliga, but there were no canoes available for sale. He ultimately ordered a Canadian-made canoe, shipped from Massachusetts to Minnesota. It was during shipping that a small circular hole was somehow punched through all the packing material and the canvas and planking of the bow, right at waterline. The excitement of unwrapping the new canoe from her shipping materials precipitously deflated the instant we saw the hole. What to do? Ship her back, losing time needed for field work and risking that another canoe might get damaged in transit? An outfitter in Ely suggested we talk to canoemaker Jeanne Bourquin. We drove to her house, and knocked on the door. A tall, gentle woman with a toddler on her hip met us, listened to our problem, and smiled. We had done other small repairs on Calypso, so she had no doubt we could fix this. She sent us off with suggestions and scraps of materials to proceed with repairs, but not before showing us around her shop, where canoe-building was in process. We repaired Arethusa (and her patch still holds, almost 3 decades later) and I paddled and carried her everywhere my heart desired. I also spent time that summer with Jeanne in her canoe shop, learning, watching, questioning, and drawing. Jeanne became a friend and teacher, and in 1997, we worked with Jeanne in her shop, as apprentices, building our own canoe on her Otter form. Corydalis (named for the tough little flower that grows from cracks of bedrock in canoe country) is a sleek 16.5’ canoe. She’s narrower than our other two, so is marginally more tippy, but she is also faster and handles more lightly. In building Corydalis, we experienced the amazing joy of bending wood, the magic of watching hammer blossoms disappear when bathed with hot water, and the sensual joy of working with cedar and ash. We love all our canoes, but Corydalis is special because we guided her journey from planks and cloth to a magnificent craft that carries us as lovingly as we carry her. My work, my life, and my very way of being seems to revolve around finding stories. These might be written words, or maybe images of some sort. Sometimes they work their way into becoming a picturebook. My sketch journals gather my day-to-day life, and help me remember all the wonderful little tidbits that might seem like duff to someone else, but are special to me. Ideas for a story about canoe building insinuated themselves into my thoughts, worked themselves into a story draft, and have found a fairly permanent place somewhere on a back burner with other ideas that have not been realized in a concrete form. But life does interesting things. A fellow named Robin contacted me in 2008 or so, wanting some critique of a manuscript he was working on. It was an interesting manuscript, involving Ely canoemaker Joe Seliga. Robin and I had sporadic back and forth communication as he worked on his manuscript. He stopped by for a visit during one of his jaunts to Ely, and becoming friends in person was way more fun than just by email. Ultimately Robin completed his story of Joe Seliga and when he found a publisher (Green Writers Press) for it, asked if he might suggest me as illustrator. I know perfectly well that it is the publisher’s responsibility to select a picturebook illustrator, but I also know that publishers will occasionally consider author suggestions. I was asked to illustrate Robin’s story, and I gladly accepted. Having learned more about Joe Seliga (whom I met during his final years) and understanding deeply what is involved in repairing and building wood and canvas canoes, I love the idea of combining these stories. What has been a wonderful additional part of the story, for me, has been to learn about the long association of Joe’s canoes to the canoe-camping traditions that have been, and are still carried out, by the programs at Camp Widjiwagan. All of these interwoven stories are also braided into the human history and natural history of the wild canoe country of northern Minnesota and western Ontario. It is this rich and diverse story that I want to convey in my illustrations, and why I have chosen to create a multi-layered visual story to accompany Robin’s words.
