When Grace United Church in Sydenham closed several years ago, it left the future of the former church building, a large stone hall, in question. It could have become a private home or apartments or a commercial space. Instead, it was leased and is now owned by Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCSC).

The agency’s original intention was to divide the space up into offices. They stripped out the interior furnishings, removed the sloped floor, and realized that what was left was much too amazing to be lost. At the urging of the board, particularly chair Joan Cameron, Don Votary was hired to oversee the restoration. He repaired the original wainscoting and floor, insulated and painted the walls. He kept local artist Ole Jonassen’s 1950’s painting (directly on the back plaster wall) of the road into Bethlehem.

Although the primary use of the hall was and is day programming for seniors and various community groups, SFCS offered some local artists the opportunity to use the hall for local arts and cultural events. This became Grace Arts, a volunteer committee which hosts art exhibitions and live performances in Grace Hall.

Grace Arts is the public face of a volunteer committee of Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCS) which hosts art exhibitions and live performances in Grace Hall, Sydenham. The committee includes representatives from across South Frontenac Township. Their mandate is “to recommend and organize uses of Grace Hall which celebrate, promote and support the diversity of creative expression in our South/Central Frontenac community.”

The hall opened with an afternoon variety concert that included a choir, vocal soloists, a poet, a composer/pianist, a country gospel singer, a folk singer and a harmonica solo. Since then a number of local artists: painters, paper-makers, photographers have hung their work on the walls, and have come to discuss their creative processes. There have been evening performances of song, storytelling and instrumental music.

If you would like to showcase your painting or other visual art, for further information please contact:

Hanna Back, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 613-372-5240 and Rose Stewart, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 613-372-3656

For music, poetry, storytelling, drama travelogue or something not on this list, contact either of the above or Nona Mariotti, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for further information.

We need volunteers to help with occasional tasks, such as putting up posters, helping with event set-up or take-down, or acting as events-greeters.

Many events are free or by donation. When admission is charged, it is to pay the performers: profits are earmarked toward upgrading the hall’s facilities. Better lighting, acoustics, and perhaps a moveable stage are all on the wish list. Whenever a group donates a portion of their services to programming needs of SFCSC, that event is advertised as a fundraiser.

The new kings of old-time music.

The Grace Centre in Sydenham is presenting the olde tyme music and modern showmanship of Sheesham and Lotus and Son this Saturday.

The trio are just back from touring Denmark and the UK to rave reviews. They are described as “dynamic and entertaining, a surprise and a delight; one of the most popular old-time and roots acts in North America”. They began as a fiddle and banjo duo, but soon added a variety of instruments and touches of vaudeville and old-time music hall to their performances.

The core duo of the band, Teilhard Frost (Sheesham), and Sam Allison (Lotus), first got together as part of a band called Flapjack. During tours with Flapjack they found they had a common love of Appalachian tunes and vaudeville, and by the time the band was winding down, they were ready to form Sheesham and Lotus. They have played all across Canada, including at the Blues Skies Music Festival, Millrace Festival of Traditional Folk Music, Summerfolk, Mariposa, Northern Lights Festival Boreal, Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival, Barrie Folk, Little Slocan Valley Fest, Cree Fest (Kasheshawan, On), Champlain Valley Folk Fest, (V.T.), Shelter Valley Folk Fest, and the Winnipeg Folk Fest. They have acted as host to the main stage at both Peterborough Folk festival and Shelter Valley. In January 2010 they held a two-week residence at Queens University Faculty of Education, teaching harmonica, step dance, and square dance to teacher candidates. They have played theatres and concert venues all across Canada, coast to coast.

The newcomer to the band is Son Sanderson, who fills out the banjo and fiddle sound with the sousaphone and occasionally the French Horn.

This is a show not to be missed by lovers of music in the Sydenham area and beyond.

The show will take place on Saturday April 25, 7:30 pm at the Grace Hall, Stagecoach Road, Sydenham; $12 advance, $15 at door. For information call the Grace Centre at 613-376-6477. Grace Centre is a fully accessible venue.

In their ongoing efforts to showcase the work of local artists, the Grace Centre Arts Committee held a special artists talk and reception at the Grace Centre in Sydenham on March 1. Three artists, Elaine Farragher, Jill Harris, and Virginia Lavin, whose works will be on display at the centre until March 26, each spoke on what inspires their work. The paintings that make up this expansive show are mostly landscapes and all three women spoke of being inspired by the bounty and beauty of the local nature where they live.

Farragher, who spoke first, said she has always “gone in for realism” and paints nature in all its glory and minutia. Farragher said she has always resisted the trend to paint more abstractly and her works are highly detailed and demonstrate her determination to paint the natural world that surrounds her.

Jill Harris is also inspired by Canadian land and sky and her far-flung travels throughout the country have captured various intimate and expansive landscapes including those from the far north, British Columbia's west coast as well as a number of intimate rural scenes in and around Verona and Harrowsmith. Her pictures are subtle and her virtuoso talent with colour creates paintings that are rich, diverse and sublime. Virginia Lavin spoke of the calming and therapeutic effects that painting offers her. She switched from watercolour to acrylics, opting for the latter for their “versatility and forgiveness”. Much of her subject matter is what she sees from her own back yard in Bellrock. Her swan series is especially pleasing. Her downy swans are lush and intricate and are masterfully and realistically depicted on bright and vibrant rice papered abstract backgrounds. For those who missed the opening talk and reception, the show can be viewed at the Grace Centre during regular business hours by calling the SFCSC at 613-376-6477. To arrange for a weekend viewing email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Over 30 art lovers gathered at the Southern Frontenac Community Service Corporation’s Grace Centre for a stellar afternoon of great art, both in works and words thanks to two accomplished local artists, Wendy Cain and Margaret Hughes.

While their works are in no way similar, hung side by side they represent two very different approaches to art, the results of which are surprisingly complementary.

Margaret Hughes, a former potter and co-owner of Cornerstone, Kingston's premiere fine Canadian craft and Inuit art store, took up chalk pastels years ago. Enjoying their directness and rich hues she approaches painting like one would a lump of clay, digging right in and working in a very direct, hands- on way. As a result the works are fresh and vibrant, and burst forth in an explosion of colour. Her past as a potter is literally apparent in her compositions; her colorful functional ceramic pieces are included in many of her still lifes.

Hughes creates her paintings by layering colour upon colour, often beginning on a black paper background. By allowing some of the black paper to show through, the colours have an added intensity. Pattern and surface decoration are key in these works, with rich, broad swaths of gorgeous colour lying side by side and portraying various table and wall coverings that boast rich plums, bright oranges, purples, blood reds and deep blacks and blues. These works are reminiscent of other colour and pattern-focused painters like Matisse and Cezanne, both of whom Hughes said are influences.

In her talk Hughes spoke of her former work as a potter for 30 years and how working with coloured glazes eventually led her to pastels. “The interaction of having made the pots and then re-presenting them in a two-dimensional form as part of a still life composition presents a stimulating challenge and connects my current practice to my past.”

Artist Wendy Cain, a printmaker/papermaker who teaches printmaking at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and who has participated in over 250 individual and group shows, spoke next. Cain developed her own pulp paper painting technique and currently works out of her studio in Newburg, Ont. Paper and printing making are more process-oriented art forms and Cain's works are crisp, clean and precise, with a certain lightness that makes her pieces appear effortless. In her presentation she demonstrated through slides the processes she uses, and it became clear that each piece involves numerous carefully pre-planned steps. Her most intriguing pieces include her homemade patterned papers, which form the backgrounds of the piece. These beautifully patterned background sections boast mainly fish and natural foliage motifs, on top of which are screen- printed, larger, more central images - things like Grecian urns and other subjects that lend the works a more cerebral quality.

Cain likes to play with juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images in a single frame and this is what gives her work its edge. Considering how the images relate is part of the puzzle she seems to offer up to her viewers and as we learned from her talk, her work is always changing and developing. In contrast to these, some of her newest works involve actually using the pulp/paper mixture as paint by spraying it in layers and creating unique landscape pieces where swirling blue skies are often front and centre.

The complementary nature of both artists’ work and their talks, which gave additional insight into the minds of these two creative and finely tuned artists, made for a very worth-while visit to the Grace Centre on Thanksgiving weekend.

The show will be up until December 12 and many of the works are for sale.

There is nothing better to get one into the spirit of fall with the vibrant colours and the cool temperatures it brings than a show of finely made, hand-crafted textiles. That was the case at the Southern Frontenac Community Services Grace Centre for a one-day show titled Textile Adventure. Sponsored by the Grace Centre Arts Committee, the show included displays and demonstrations by the Trinity Quilters, the Frontenac Rug Hookers, the Cataraqui Guild of Needlework Arts, weaver Beth Abbott and knitter Michelle Zigman.

I spoke with long-time painter turned rug hooker, Linda Hetherington, whose 3 by 9 foot hall floor runner was front and center at the show. Titled "Fantasy Creatures" the piece demonstrates how craft can quickly become art in the right hands. Hetherington worked for years as a professional painter and said the piece was not planned but rather just seemed to grow of its own accord. She said that she looked at mythological drawings and old tapestries to inspire the fantasy animals that appear in the piece. The colors of the piece are both rich and subtle and were hand dyed by the maker. The piece took Hetherington a full year and over 1000 hours to complete. “It is repetitive and methodical work and is really meditative.”

Hetherington makes her pieces for herself and, disappointingly for fans of her work, does not sell them.

The show included various kinds of block quilts both in traditional and modern designs, a historic name quilt and a barjello, different types of needle work and embroidery including Swedish weaving, felting, black work, long and short stitch, Elizabethan style needle work and examples of gold thread work. Master weaver Beth Abbott was on hand to give spinning demonstrations and Michelle Zigman demonstrated various knitting and weaving techniques. Many of the Trinity quilters were also busy working on projects that they had on the go. For those with a passion for the textile arts, the show was a delight and an inspiration for those looking for new ways to get their hands busy this coming fall and winter season.

Two artists, both photographers, presently have their work on display at the Southern Frontenac Community Services Grace Centre in Sydenham. One half of the main hall showcases the works of Ryan Wilkinson, who unfortunately due to a family emergency, was unable to attend the artists' talk there on August 16. In his absence Wilma Kenny, a member of the Grace Centre Arts Committee, read an artist's statement by him in which he spoke about the importance of art and why he makes it. In the statement he said,” Art is something of beauty and it is something needed more and more in this world. It is a way to celebrate our successes; it's a way to showcase who we are individually though our eyes, our stories and our emotions. Art for me is a way to bring peace into the world. It is an opportunity to collectively see into the souls and hearts of our friends, loved ones and strangers.”

Wilkinson's pictures include portraits, landscapes and urban scenes that are as wonder-inducing as they are carefully composed and their varied subject matter inspires viewers to look more carefully at the world and the people that inhabit it. One piece titled “Surf”, a black and white image of a couple in full stride heading to the water's edge, one carrying a surf board, captures a determination and eerie intensity perhaps not understood by those who do not surf. Similarly a portrait titled “Pondering”, of a smoker gazing upwards in what looks like a foreign land, speaks to the beauty, mystery and inspiration that can be found on a stranger's face, in a strange land. In closing his statement Wilkinson said, “Continue to make art in any form and, do it for you.”

Photographer Louise Day was present for the talk and spoke about what inspires her work. Taught by renowned artist Kim Ondaatje, Day's best works tend to be more abstract and many of her best pieces take as their subject matter the beauty and intricacies of the marks of mother nature. Frost patterns are front and centre in Louise's half of the hall. Her large photographs of these intricate and colorful designs often captured on window panes are a sight to behold. Their lacy, sometimes symmetrical, but more often asymmetrical patterns look like abstract paintings, the colors subtle and dewy as though applied with an airbrush, the patterns wild and wonderful and encouraging the viewer to examine the work ever closer in the hopes of better understanding the mystery of these amazing natural formations. One newer work of melted frost bubbles is especially sharp and the bubbles seem to cling as if by magic to the background surface, looking as if they might just bounce right out of the frame at any moment.

The Grace Centre continues to bring a wide variety of local artists' work to the general public and there is no better space for art lovers to behold fine art than at the main hall. The photography show will be on display until September 22. The Grace Centre is located at 4295 Stagecoach Road in Sydenham and since the hall is often used for regular daily programming it is best to call 613-376-6477 to find out the best times to visit.

Southern Frontenac Community Services (SFCS) and the Grace Arts Committee are pleased to announce a photography exhibit featuring work from local photographers, Louise Day and Ryan R.F. Wilkinson at the Grace Centre from August 1 - September 22. A free reception and artist talks will take place on Saturday August 16 from 1-2:30pm.

Louise Day grew up in Ridgetown, Ont. Her mother, an artist, worked in graphite portraits, landscape paintings in oil, acrylic and water colour. Louise graduated as an R.N., married Dr. Gordon Day and moved to Verona in 1963. She worked in Family Practice with her husband for 37 years. Day became interested in photography and took lessons from Kim Ondaatje of Blueroof Farm, who taught her “how to see”. Many of her images were taken in the gardens and woods at Blueroof. Day entered won first prize in the category of “In Praise of Plants” in Equinox magazine’s photo contest. She has had a number of solo exhibitions.

Ryan R. F. Wilkinson is virtually new to the photography world, coming from a background of oil painting and pencil drawing influenced by his grandfather, Alfred Karu out of Estonia.

A graduate of Sheridan College arts program, Ryan has blended his abstract eye for the world with peaceful and simple photography using various sources of natural light, and timeless moments. Ryan is always looking to learn, grow, and develop as an artist with an open mind, and open eyes through various subject matter including landscapes, people, and street photography.  

A capella choir, Melodia Monday, will perform a benefit concert on Sunday May 25, 3 p.m. at the Grace Centre in Sydenham. The concert will feature a wide variety of exciting spirituals and wonderful harmonies. Cost is $15 per person. Tickets are available at the Rural VISIONS Centre - 4419 George Street, Sydenham, ON K0H 2T0; 613-376-6477. All net proceeds support Southern Frontenac Community Services’ Enhancement Campaign.

Melodia Monday was formed in September of 2002. The choir originally consisted of 11 singers, and they rehearsed around the kitchen table of a country home north of Gananoque. Early repertoire consisted of madrigals and some sacred music like “O Magnum Mysterium” by Victoria.

Over the years the choir has become larger and performs a wider repertoire. Concerts now feature jazz, spirituals and folk songs in addition to traditional classical choral music. Melodia Monday endeavours to feature Canadian composers and arrangers. One of the tenors in the group, David Adams, has arranged a number of pieces for the choir including the sea chanty “Spanish Ladies” and the folk song “Donkey Riding”. Melodia Monday has also performed several pieces arranged by Mark Sirett, musical director of the Cantabile Choirs of Kingston.

In its early years, Melodia Monday performed without a conductor. The number of singers was small enough that one of the members could guide the choir while singing. As numbers increased, such conducting became impractical, so in 2008 Melodia Monday recruited Carol Ramer, an experienced and talented choral director, to conduct the choir. Under Carol’s leadership membership grew again, with singers joining the choir from Brockville, Maitland and Kingston. The choir now has more than 20 members from as far west as Newburgh and as far east as Maitland.

During Carol’s tenure as conductor, Melodia Monday took part in the Kiwanis Music Festival in Kingston where the choir won the Shelagh Leach prize for SATB choirs. Melodia Monday also performed at the final concert for the Gananoque Concert Association in April of 2009.

In June 2010, Carol retired as conductor of Melodia Monday and one of the founding members of the group, Doug Routledge, took on the role.

In April, 2013, the choir performed the final concert in the Gananoque Concert Association series. The programme for that concert included “Breathe on Us”, a work commissioned by Melodia Monday from Dr. Mark Sirett, musical director of the Cantabile Choirs of Kingston.

Melodia Monday is delighted to have been asked to perform at the Grace Centre in Sydenham in a concert to benefit the Southern Frontenac Community Services. This concert will be held at 3 p.m. on Sunday, May 25. The repertoire for the concert will include a mix of classical pieces, spirituals, jazz and folk songs. The women of Melodia Monday will be featured singing “Garden Song”, a piece with music by Jennifer Bennett and lyrics by Wilma Kenny of Sydenham.

On April 12 in a talk titled “Trees Worth Knowing in Eastern Ontario”, naturalist Owen Clarkin shared his love and knowledge of trees with guests as part of a nature talk sponsored by Southern Frontenac Community Services and the Grace Centre Arts Committee at the Grace Centre in Sydenham. Clarkin has been working for a number of years alongside painter Aleta Karstad and her husband biologist Fred Schueler in their ongoing research project titled “Fragile Inheritance”. The project’s goal is to “promote and support the long term study of species in their habitats and the human and environmental effects on them”.

Clarkin, who grew up in Russell, Ontario, said that it was the huge elms in those parts that first fascinated him, along with the well-known book “Native Trees of Canada” by R.C. Hosie. Clarkin, who was educated as a chemist, has for years been studying and photographing trees and he began looking for answers to a number of questions he felt were not being considered in the science of forestry. “I had questions that weren’t being considered, likely because of a lack of funding, so I decided independently to begin studying the ecology of the forests of Eastern Ontario.”

In his presentation Clarkin highlighted the not so well known relatives of common trees in the area, like the sugar maple’s cousin, the black maple, which produces a tastier sap than its relative. He spoke about the heartleaf birch, which has a more ragged and copper-colored covering than the paper birch. He demonstrated the difference between the shag and shell bark hickories, and also spoke of the Kentucky coffee tree, which has huge twigs and seeds and “stands up well in ice storms because of its smaller overall surface area”. He spoke about the Blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata), the only ash tree native to North America that is resilient to the emerald ash borer.

There are two cousins of the American elm: the rock elm, which can be identified by its corky twigs and pointy, yellowish buds, and the slippery elm, which has wavier branches and red, hairy buds on thicker, stouter twigs. He spoke about the Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), which can be found in the Carolinian Zone forests that come as far north as the southern side of Lake Ontario. He spoke of the red spruce (Picea rubens), which has been found growing in Algonguin Park and can tolerate very dry and hot conditions.

Clarkin advised that if you want to get to know a tree, start first by being able to identify its twigs and buds. He stressed that research into forest and tree ecology is important since trees are “facing a huge number of threats right now as a result of climate change, which is bringing with it hotter and dryer conditions, and globalization, which is bringing invasive insects and fungi. “We're noticing now that trees are not growing as big and living as long as they used to just a few decades ago. So this research is very practical but it is proving very difficult to get funding for it.”

To address that concern, Clarkin is now working on a book about trees and has collected a lot of material which he hopes to sort through and publish at a later date. In an effort to spread his love of trees and specifically elms, Clarkin commissioned Aleta Karstad to paint one of his favorite trees, a 92-foot-tall, one-metre-wide rock elm in Merrickville that he estimates could be anywhere from 200 to 250 years old. Karstad's painting titled “Merrickville Rock Elm” can be seen on Aleta's blog at aletakarstad.com and it is one of three paintings that Clarkin will commission her to paint.

Clarkin offered advice on practical steps that homeowners can take to assist the health of their trees. “First, I would make a point of identifying what is growing in your woodlots, along your fence lines or in your yards since that will give you clues about what the land is like and will tell you which other species (likely the known companions of the species already there) are missing and that you might want to consider reintroducing.”

Clarkin has been collecting seeds from the majestic Merrickville rock elm and is offering them to anyone hoping to grow one of their own. Email him atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

It's not often that one hears the words “art” and “science” in the same sentence. But that is often the case when it comes to painter Aleta Karstad, who spoke on February 22 at the Grace Centre in Sydenham.

Karstad is one of three artists participating in a group show there titled “Local Reflections on Art and Nature”. The show was organized by Southern Frontenac Community Services’ Grace Centre Arts Committee in partnership with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the show goes a long way in explaining the close relationship between art, nature and science.

Karstad and her husband Fred Schueler, who is a naturalist, herpetologist, scholar and the research curator at the Bishop Mills Natural History Centre in Bishop Mills, Ontario, are currently working with the Nature Conservancy of Canada surveying the conservancy’s five newly purchased properties in the Frontenac Arch.

Schueler is conducting biological inventories of the sites and Karstad is painting the flora, fauna and landscapes there. The couple have been working as a team for years, with Schueler researching and Karstad painting the natural world. They have published numerous books based on their findings. The work they are doing with the NCC will assist staff with their long-term management plans for the Frontenac Arch lands. Currently Karstad is creating paintings of the Arch lands and she is displaying and selling them on her website (aletakarstad.com), with the proceeds helping to fund Schueler's research. It is these paintings, some still wet, that were on display and for sale at the Grace Centre show and they demonstrate the prowess of this artist, who for decades has been focusing her sights on the natural world.

Karstad received her formal art training at the Central Technical School in Toronto and in 1972 began work in biological illustration with the National Museum of Canada. Since that time she and her husband have published numerous books about their research and findings and in 2008 set up the model of how they work together, which Karstad calls the Art and Science Model. “Though we officially named our model in 2008, in reality we have always worked that way," Karstad explained at her talk. “It is traditional to pay money for completed artworks, whereas scientists must themselves actually pay money to publish their research. We do research linked with art, art linked with research..... and we let the art support the research.”

Not only does the art support the research, but the works themselves stand alone as subtle and masterful depictions of nature’s bounty. Karstad is an experienced and talented painter and has the ability to create simultaneously dynamic and subtle paintings whether portraying a large, expansive vista as with her “Loughborough Meadows” or in her much smaller work titled “Wild Cucumber”, which depicts two delicate pods clinging precariously to their winter vine. Her feel for colour is direct and vibrant and her attention to the tiniest details make for beautifully subtle and delicate paintings.

In a third piece titled “Fern Pelt of the Frontenacs”, Karstad zooms in on a section of mosses, ferns and lichens that grow in the Arch lands. She said it is one of her favorite paintings and she used the subject of that particular painting as a perfect metaphor in explaining her and her husband’s model of working. “In our work, Fred and I depend on each other like the medulla and the alga that makes up a lichen. The alga, being green, makes food from light, and the medulla, which cannot feed itself, supplies a body, like Fred with his scientific body of knowledge, building on his database. This knowledge informs my art, carries me about on field trips, and in return, the art brings in the money for the research.”

Karstad and Schueler are a perfect match for the NCC and their work will go a very long way in helping the organization demonstrate to others the magical and diverse beauty of the Frontenac Arch. The show “Local Reflections on Art and Nature" will be up at the Grace Centre until April 29 and admission is free. The hall is open most weekdays from 10 am – 4 pm but it is best to call the Southern Frontenac Community Services’ office at 613-376-6477 ext. 205 to confirm that your visit does not coincide with regularly scheduled activities there. For those who missed Karstad's talk, a second reception and artists’ talk will take place at the Grace Centre on Saturday March 8 from 1 -2:30pm. The Grace Centre is located at 4295 Stagecoach Road in Sydenham