BIBLE HILL, N.S. — For Satvir Sekhon, art is a way to remember the land of her birth.
She recalls her youth in India through a painting of women in brightly-coloured saris and jewellery dancing in the monsoon rains, or a couple leading their camel into a desert sunset.
“I find joy when I paint and mixing the colours is very soothing for me,” said Sekhon, who now lives in Truro. “When I paint, my mind and everything goes away, all the worries and thoughts. It’s very calming.”
She displayed her two paintings, titled ‘Monsoon’ and ‘Life in Desert’ at the Dal AC Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibit’s opening night on Feb. 28.
Sekhon’s work joined dozens of other paintings, sculptures and drawings produced by Dal AC’s current students, stuff and alumni in a three-week-long exhibition designed to showcase their creative side.
Sekhon herself came to Dal AC in 2010 as an international student from Ludhiana, in northern India’s Punjab region.
The environmental scientist graduate is from a humble background, growing up in a village outside the city of Ludhiana, where her family owned farmland.
There, Sekhon witnessed the coming of the summer monsoon rains, transforming the parched landscape into verdant green.
She remembered village life as simple, turning on the cycle of the seasons and lacking the conflicts of the big city.
It was the simplicity of rural India that Sekhon portrayed in her paintings, each of which took about two days to complete using an acrylic surface.
While ‘Monsoon’ was an echo of her village, ‘Life in Desert’ was meant to portray India’s Thar Desert, home to nomadic tribes on its western border with Pakistan.
But Sekhon only started painting after she gave birth to her child, as a way to keep her sanity amid a hectic family schedule.
“It’s like meditation for me,” said Sekhon. “It was self-discovery, something that calmed my mind and gave me a part of my own life back, because when you’re a mother, you’re always thinking about your baby. There’s no time for yourself.”
Now working as a math and science teacher at Truro Junior High School, Sekhon and her young family stayed on in Truro after she graduated Dal AC in 2012.
The Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibits runs until March 21 at the MacRae Library on 135 College Road. Entry is free and any artwork marked with a red sticker is available for sale.
Truro man builds and plays his own bagpipes
George Macintosh first picked up a set of bagpipes when he was just eight years old.
Decades later, he showed off two sets of hand-made wooden bagpipes, one of which he played for guests at the Dal AC Fine Arts and Crafts Exhibit’s opening night on Feb. 28.
“In my early 20s I took a notion that if somebody else could make them, then I should be able to figure that out as well,” said Macintosh, who lives in Truro.
Macintosh, who graduated in 1991 with a degree in agricultural economics from what was then the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, has since played his bagpipes at public events including convocation ceremonies at his alma mater.
He described his bagpiping journey as “a little bit of experimenting and trial and error.”
Macintosh used a 1950s book published by England’s Oxford University as an instruction manual of sorts, which gave him the dimensions on how to build European-style bagpipes.
“You start with square pieces of wood and then you grind them down roughly and then you bore them,” said Macintosh of the bagpipe-making process. “It’s a horizontal boring process, so you just mount them on the lead with one end exposed.”
Once the bore is completed, the pipe is turned around it.
Macintosh used Canadian wood for both his models, likely from Ontario, to build both sets of bagpipes. The ones he performed on Feb. 28 were their natural light brown colour.
However, the other set Macintosh used for his art display were treated with an ebonizing agent to turn the walnut wood he used to turn them pitch-black.
The pipes that Macintosh makes are classed as Highland Small Pipes. Unlike regular bagpipes, they are built in a way to make a softer sound when played, making them ideal for performing in an indoor space.