Art and Architecture: Hanging Mobiles and St. Georges Church at Lake Simcoe

Today's blog is going to be a bit schizophrenic.    For my art offering, I have the mobile which hangs in my bedroom in front of my east (downtown) facing window.  Then we are going to fly north of Toronto to the shores of Lake Simcoe during the summer time for my Architecture piece.

My brother gave this wonderful hanging mobile for Christmas probably 6 years ago and I have cherished it since.  He told me that it was created by an artist who he knew and whose work was mostly lost in a garage arson fire some years earlier.  I don't recall the name of the artist whose work this is, it is very similar to things I have seen by Alexander Calder.  Perhaps someone reading this blog might know the name of the artist who could have created this hanging mobile.

Illustrated better in the 2nd photo, the hanging "bits" are all black except for one of the "arrows", which is bright red.  The offsetting weight is a big round circle with a hole offside.  It is calming to watch it as I lie in bed.  It hangs beside my furnace vent and when the heat (or in summer the A/C) comes on it whirls around.  Makes a racket, I might add, as the metal bits clang together, but I seem not to notice that.

In order to get the proper lighting in front of the window I had to close my shade blinds, it gives an interesting background effect, to see the CN Tower and downtown buildings in silhouette, don't you think?

We will go to an entirely different location from my bedroom for the architecture part of this blog.  In fact I am going to take you out of Toronto entirely to a place about an hour and a half north, the Village of Jackson's Point on Lake Simcoe, an area within what we Torontonians affectionately refer to as cottage country.  It lies within the Town of Georgina, in south-central Ontario's York County.  It is actually only just at the nearest edge of potential vacation land and technically is still within the borders of what we know as the Greater Toronto Area or GTA.  Some folks commute to work in the City of Toronto from this area, but that has been a more recent development and mostly it is filled with summer cottage owners and retirees.

 At the edge of this village is a campgrounds,  Sibbald Point Provincial park, from which I have some very pleasant camping memories.  Also a friend of mine has a cottage in the area, so I have been there a few times.  I took these pictures when I visited my friend last summer.  Nice to be reminded of greenery and warmer temps and happy times.

From Wiki regarding Sibbald Point Park:

Two of the major attractions in the park were constructed by the Sibbald family during the nineteenth century. The family home was purchased by Susan Sibbald from Major William Kingdom Rains in 1835. She supervised its transformation from a small cottage into a rural estate, a process which was completed in the 1840s. She named the structure Eildon Hall after the family estate in Scotland. Today the building serves as a museum dedicated to life in rural Ontario during the mid-nineteenth century.

My photos today are from the St. Georges Anglican Church built in 1877, which is the 2nd major attraction of the park and the village of Jackson's Point.  This building replaced a simple wooden building, built under direction of Mr. John Mills Jackson, after whom the community of Jackson's Point is named.

The Sibbald Family donated the land for and arranged construction of this very pretty church on the shores of the lake beside Eildon Hall.  Built of hand cut stone, it is quite impressive.  There is a cemetery beside the church in which  famed Ontario humourist Stephen Leacock ,  novelist Mazo de la Roche as well as musician Jim Schwalm are buried.  

I found it to be a very tranquil place and quite enjoyed sitting there for while as I talked to my friend about his 3 month trip volunteering in Spain.  I should think it would be very nice to be laid to rest here beside the lake - not that I am expecting to need a resting spot anytime soon, I might add.