Lacing a Legacy into a Ribbon of Road with Lorrie Flemming

Our Stories is the Gift that’s Wrapped into a Ribbon-of-Hope tying us together as One…

“And Shaping the Stories into an Everlasting Telling Art Form.”

Narrative by Lorrie Fleming

            Alas, 2021 is ending, and humanity pleas to the gatekeeper to reopen our freedom and reset life into a familiar bond of connective hearts.  The COVID virus has taught us many lessons in coping with change.  The biggest adjustment (for me) alludes to travel restrictions that yields a feeling of being held against our will.   The phrase be calm, kind, and safe has been our creed as society gains wisdom to defeat this invisible enemy; and to exercise caution, sanitize & wash hands until they are raw, wear masks that block our smile and never leave a trace of doubt within our every step.

In this time of seemingly endless darkness, Art is a beacon of light that appears in plain sight, lined in blue and waiting for you to start anew and to create a fresh economy within the comfort of our home.  Michelle instills her wisdom and teaches us to be Wayfinders, to appreciate and unite ourselves (as busy bees) into linear Creative Art Communities that co-exist by joining hearts as one welcome family into our hives.   

Through a Mother Road, we become a family and dear to me, my step-grandmother (Nana Lee) hailed from Cumberland, Maryland, a coal mining hub in the heart of the USA.  This touches a remarkable commonality with Michelle who grew up in the rural coal mining community of Sparwood set in the East Kootenay Region known as a gateway along the Crowsnest Highway #3.  Bonded together by the Mother Road, Michelle and I share a heartfelt connection in cultivating a legacy lined by strands of ribbons that unite hearts along a spiritually charged heritage highway that Michelle coined “Art Route Blue”.  

You may wonder why US Highway (Route 66) aka The Mother Road remains significant to Canadians and flows so deeply into the veins of a popular culture that crosses two nations pumping life into the hearts of our shared traditions?  The question is not where the road is located, nor where it begins or ends, the question is why it exists and how it sustains itself for nearly a century by the interconnected will of kinfolk.  This Ribbon of Road is eternally recognized as a guideway driven by the curiosity of the human soul and cultivated by a vastly interspersed modern mechanism turning a linear link into a cornerstone of a shared culture.  

Considering today’s COVID culture, let us gather on our computer screens (& keyboards) to unify & build a bridge to braid the Art Trails and synthesize our ideas together with harmonious strength; and reconnect our world into a joyful pathway to hope. 

I close with a Quote by Canadian Artist Emily Carr (who was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast) – “There is a side of friendship that develops better and stronger by correspondence than by contact …. The absence of the flesh in writing perhaps brings souls nearer.”

Believe in the Magic of Art and the Stories will come Alive”!