Yesterday afternoon, I went to meet with a friend from university at the Galerie Lee Matasi Gallery in the Byward Market where she was showcasing her artwork. The last time I’d seen Stephany was at the same place this past June for the vernissage of the Ottawa School of Art’s graduation art exhibit, to which she’d contributed several pieces, having just completed her program. That evening, the place had been sweltering and positively stuffed with guests, so we’d had very little time or space to have a proper chat, especially since so many others had come out in support to see her work.
In stark contrast to that first meeting, the gallery yesterday had been quiet and cool, virtually empty of guests other than us. When we’d exchanged hellos, she led me through the front doors and then turned off to the right side, ducking into a bright corner room with high windows and an exposed ceiling. With the afternoon sunlight giving the entire room even, natural lighting, and the soft yet bright colour palette of the pieces she had put up, the space felt effortlessly warm and inviting.
My gaze was immediately drawn to one watercolour in particular, however, and it took some effort to look elsewhere. The piece she had called Affection was just that beautiful.
Though Stephany is an interdisciplinary artist, she has a particular affinity for watercolour, a medium she has been passionate about painting in since I first met her. All of the experience she’s had in painting with it, cultivating her talent over the years, really shows in her pieces.
We had the little space to ourselves when we arrived, and Stephany was kind enough to oblige me with in-depth explanations on the meaning of each piece in the room; I took a picture of her artist statement when we arrived, but I didn’t read it until later that evening. The artist statement feels appropriately professional and left plenty of room for the viewer to form their own impressions of each piece.
On the other hand, Stephany’s in-person explanations for Re-connect were deeply personal, as she had a warm, sometimes humorous anecdote to tell me for each piece. The exhibit as a whole is a tribute to her mother, who passed away. In acrylic paint, a medium that her mother loved, Stephany reproduced four photos that her mother had taken and shared on social media for family — photos of things that represented elements of who she was as a person.
For some paintings, she took extra care to make colours true-to-life (a particular brown bowl that her mother had always made a certain Cambodian salad in represented the taste of home), while for others, she embellished the subject of the photograph, paining it the way that her mother’s aura had felt (in Bloom an ethereal flower is held up for the camera in her mother’s hand).
The piece she had called Crabapples had sort of stumped me when I had first seen it in the graduation exhibit; as pretty a painting as it is, I just hadn’t been able to guess at the significance behind it. Yesterday, I got the answer. Stephany explained that whenever they’d gone to parks and come across crabapple trees, her mother had excitedly gotten out a plastic tub of a container and they’d picked the best specimens to bring home to be made into a spicy dish that Stephany assured me is very tasty. I couldn’t help but laugh in surprise, because I’d grown up believing they weren’t edible. Her anecdote completely changed the way I viewed that painting, especially with the way she described her mother’s enthusiasm.
The watercolours, meanwhile, were Stephany’s recreation of three family photographs that held particular significance for her, each transformed through the aesthetics of her soft yet vibrant colour choices.
When she’d answered my (many) questions, she let me finish admiring the watercolours — that is, until she let out a sigh of annoyance, punctuated by a short laugh. When I asked what was wrong, she showed me how someone had rearranged her business cards so that they no longer went in the order they had been meant to go in. Originally, she had arranged them so that taking one card (the Witch in the foreground) would reveal a different card (the Familiar in the foreground), each with her name and contact information on the back. I snapped a photo of her artistic vision once she’d rearranged them. I was laughing at her being particular about the setup, but only because I know I would have had the same reaction.
I took home a card with the pensive Witch in the foreground, in case you’re curious.
When everything was back in order, we left the gallery and headed for La Catrina, a small family-owned churreria/café in the Market, whose fare I have thoroughly enjoyed several times now. We both decided to try their churro ice cream bowls to cool down, and they were exactly as delicious to eat as they sound.
Though… we got chased out of the restaurant courtyard by a very insistent wasp soon after we started eating. Luckily our churros were entirely portable, so we took it as a good excuse to walk through the Market and then over into Major’s Hill Park, the good weather having attracted plenty of locals and tourists alike.
We considered crossing over the bridge into Gatineau once we reached the little lookout over the river that gives a clear view of the Parliament from the back, but it was getting hot and we were both in need of a cold drink. So we headed back the way we had come in search of iced tea.
At the tea shop, we both immediately set our sights on their jasmine tea, of which there were two varieties, and had a laugh with the worker behind the counter when we asked what the difference between the varieties was and he admitted he wasn’t certain. Flavour-wise, one was just a bit more strongly scented than the other; the other difference was that one variety was the type of leaf that has been carefully rolled by hand (that is the type that I have at home, that I drink on special occasions).
I first tried jasmine tea when I went to Japan in 2012, and had lunch at a Chinese restaurant there. It was a good meal, but easily overshadowed by how much I had loved the delicate fragrance of the jasmine tea. It remains one of my favourites, still. Stephany explained that it is a variety that she drinks often because it was a fragrance her mother adored (she grew a jasmine tree and used to pluck the blooms and tuck them in Stephany’s hair). It was a cool coincidence that we both immediately gravitated to that particular tea.
We decided to take a walk around the terrace of the Rideau Centre as we sipped our iced jasmine teas, and by that time, it was late afternoon so the sun was turning a golden orange and preparing to set. Even though I have lived most of my life in Ottawa and went to the Rideau Centre often starting in my teen years, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized you could actually go up onto the roof and that there was a nice, quiet terrace up there.
We’d covered so many topics by that point in our conversation that, finally giving in to sitting down on a concrete bench, we got out our phones and began exchanging photos and anecdotes about our cats (hers, Marcel, is a grey tabby that, like Scout, gets into a great many shenanigans). We laughed. We talked about family, creative pursuits, developing a good work-art-life balance, and about web design. And then we parted ways and went home.
To be brief: it was a really good afternoon.
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You can find Stephany Lay’s portfolio, shop, and socials [ here ].