HOW TO LIVE

I've been making a ring as a gift for someone who has been such an important part of Ivaan's and my life.  I've learned a lot from her.  When someone you love is dying, it's hard not to fixate on the impending death, trying to protect them from pain and fear, trying to distract them from what is inevitable, trying to soothe them and make them comfortable - and, in doing so, insulating them and making their life become smaller and smaller.

It's really only in retrospect that I've come to realize that the braver, kinder way is to help them have a bigger and bigger life.  I don't mean the "bucket list" sort of life, where you're helping them tick off items on a list of external achievements: hiking to Machu Picchu, swimming with dolphins, winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean a life that is not defined by physical, medical or mental limitations, where one's biggest fear does not involve being too cold, or hungry, or tired, or having one's prescription run out.  I mean a life where there is hope, an opportunity and a reason to dream.

I'm making this ring for someone who for eight years inspired Ivaan to recover from each stroke, to live large, to plan the impossible by envisioning a recovery that was his if only he would reach for it - by telling him with the full authority of medical expertise that the impossible was indeed possible, and that it lay within his grasp.

I'm proud to have been able to keep Ivaan feeling safe, comfortable, loved, protected and fed, but I'm even prouder to know that someone else was inspiring him to live the fullest, most satisfying, bravest life, to face hardships, to surmount obstacles, and to continue to contribute to the lives of the people he loved, mine especially, until his last day on earth.

Cheryl, I hope this ring reminds you of Ivaan, because it reminds me of the two of you.

(c) 2008 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

MY EUREKA MOMENT

Back in 2006, Ivaan made an 18 karat yellow gold ring for a young man who had first seen Ivaan's jewellery in 1999 when he moved to Toronto from St. Petersburg, Russia.   In the intervening years, he had married and the first of his two daughters was born, so it had been a busy few years for him, but he always remembered the impact this one particular ring had made on him.  So he did some detective work, managed to locate Ivaan's former partner, Tamas, and that's how this young man, whom we'll call S, came to reconnect with Ivaan and to have the beautiful Ivaan ring he'd dreamed of.

Sadly, a couple of years later, his beloved ring disappeared down a storm sewer grate and he felt its absence keenly.  There wasn't much we could do, as Ivaan was gravely ill and very close to the end of his life, but I told S that if I ever found the mould, I'd make him a replacement in silver. I did look several times among the moulds for 1999 and prior, and was unable to find the mould.  For a while, I'd make piles of moulds (à la Ivaan) with notes on them saying "S's ring?" but when I injected them with wax, they were invariably the wrong mould.  I felt quite discouraged.

Meanwhile, S moved back to Russia.

Last week, as I was injecting the moulds from 2006, I discovered a misfiled mould whose wax was almost certainly S's ring.  With shaking hands, I took a photograph and emailed it to him.  Next day, S confirmed that it was indeed his ring.  Here's the wax:

(c) 1999 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

A few days ago, I cast it in sterling silver.  I think it came out pretty excellently.

(c) 1999 Estate of Ivaan Kotulsky

And now, my mission (should I choose to accept it) is to figure out how to get the ring safely from Toronto to St. Petersburg, Russia.

AN ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG

Recently, I've started honing my wax injection skills out of stark necessity.  I'd decided to make a complete inventory of waxes from Ivaan's rubber moulds, dating back to 1976, of which there are now about two thousand.  Waxes come in different colours, each with its own properties.  Probably the least forgiving is dark blue.  It captures detail beautifully but it is harder and more brittle than most of the other colours.  But I prefer it, because I'm able to see the fine details more clearly than if I'd used a lighter coloured wax.

It used to baffle Ivaan that I organized his moulds according to year. His standard procedure was to have them organized according to nothing. He figured if he put a mould in a particular place, he would remember where it was.  This worked about 1 per cent of the time.  Ivaan never really used his moulds once he made them; they were simply a record of the pieces he'd made. He might search for one if a client lost a ring and he had to duplicate it, but basically they just sat there in stacks.

I found the "filed by year" system to be useful, because it tracked how prolific he had been in a particular year, and I eventually realized that a large number of moulds in any one year meant he was likely to have a health crisis.  Both heart attacks and all five strokes were preceded by a significantly larger number of moulds.  If he'd been a squirrel, he would have been storing nuts for winter. And like a squirrel, a lot of random digging was required when he suddenly had to find a particular one.

I started with the year 2002, because there were over 100 moulds from that year (and his massive stroke was in December 2002).  He had done some brilliant work that year.  At first, it was taking me about ten tries to produce a reasonably good wax, but I guess wax injecting shares some characteristics with film photography:  after a while you start analyzing what you did wrong, and trying to improve the result by better technique:  more or less pressure, higher or lower wax temperature, longer or shorter cooling time.

And soon, I'd noticed my average was about one in six.  I was making progress.  I was particularly good at the bigger pieces, such as pendant pieces, and I once did about forty perfect waxes in a row on the first try.  I felt extremely proud of myself when I took some of my waxes to the caster, to have them cast in metal.  He looked at the dark blue waxes curiously and asked, "Who did these?"  I summoned up all my nonchalance to reply casually that I'd made them myself, but it was hard to wipe the smile off my face when he said admiringly, "These are g-o-o-o-d."

So I've now finished 2002, 2006, 2008, and I've started on the "Current" bin - the moulds I've made since Ivaan's death.  It's been a very fruitful endeavour, as I've found incredible things I'd never seen before.  When I am working on injecting waxes, I have the strongest sense of Ivaan's presence in the room. Ivaan must be as impressed with his brilliance as I am.  The wax injector now sits in the store.  I love it when people come in to watch and are gobsmacked by the beauty of some of his newly-dug-up artefacts.

Here's a photo of the pendant pieces of 2002:  can't you just imagine wearing one of these around your neck?

(c)  2002 ESTATE OF IVAAN KOTULSKY

THE ROAD TO ATELIER IVAAN

When I'm giving someone directions to Atelier Ivaan, I often say "We're on the south side of Dupont, between the Universal Grill and Vinny's Panini."  But every time I provide these valuable navigation tools, I have the uneasy feeling that I'm not doing justice to Ivaan's journey, which resulted in the existence of Atelier Ivaan.

So when I had an opportunity to create a custom streetcar-style sign, I immediately thought of honouring each of the streets on which Ivaan lived in Toronto.  Each time I see the sign, I'm reminded of the stories Ivaan has told me of living in each of these places.

Degrassi, Wyatt and Augusta were the streets of Ivaan's childhood.  Euclid was home during his high school years.  When he first moved out of his parents' home, he moved into a tiny apartment at 2 St. Joseph Street, and that's where he lived when I first met him.  He lived at two addresses on Yonge Street.  Atlas was a brief pied-a-terre,  and Wellington and Portland Streets were the scene of our engagement and marriage. In fact, Portland was by far the longest residence of both our lives.  We lived there for over 15 years.

We moved back to St. Joseph Street in the last year of Ivaan's life, when his paralysis made it essential to live on one level; it was a challenging transition for both of us.  On the one hand, it meant selling the house we loved and where we'd had so much fun.  On the other hand, once we moved to St. Joseph Street, I was right on the university campus, and we were very close to the hospitals we relied on.

Winchester Street is the location of Toronto Necropolis Cemetery, where Ivaan chose to be buried, and Dupont is, I guess, the scene of his resurrection as Atelier Ivaan.

For a while, I hung the sign in the front window, alternating it with the portrait of Ivaan by Daniel P. Izzard, but I've learned that people prefer to see Ivaan's handsome portrait in the window, so the sign now hangs on the wall of the store.  I really feel it honours Ivaan's journey through Toronto and his ongoing legacy in the form of Atelier Ivaan.

23 LIGHT BULBS

Last week I did an inventory. There are  23 light bulbs in use at Atelier Ivaan. Changing burnt-out bulbs had become my part time job, and I was beginning to feel like a criminal for using so much electricity.  It's a small store, and in some small places darkness can be construed as "ambience", but in my experience, people generally like to see the jewellery they are trying on.

So I took a long hard look (glare, actually) around the room and came to the conclusion that my red south wall was the culprit.  Red seems to absorb light. By contrast,  our window display, which is painted apple green, is always bright and cheerful.  What did I have to lose, except for a couple of evenings, a bucket of paint, and 23 lightbulbs?

I'm unveiling our new look today. There is nothing understated about it. Nothing could have prepared me for walking into the store this morning. Here's how many light bulbs I switched on:  none.  I'm going to keep a scorecard to gauge the reactions of visitors.  Feel free to weigh in with your opinion.  And, if you're planning to drop by, bring your sunglasses.

WHAT I SAVED

About five o'clock on the morning of January 18th, 2002, I was startled awake from such a vivid dream that I knew I needed to write something down immediately before it evanesced.  I awoke so suddenly that I inadvertently woke Ivaan. I muttered "pencil".  He actually kept a pencil and paper beside the bed because he dreaded forgetting his dreams, so he handed them to me.

Even after writing down what  I needed to, I felt far too unsettled to fall asleep again.  I felt I'd had a presentiment of his death.

Ivaan had suffered his first stroke in 2000, and two heart attacks in the early 1990s, so I was hyper-vigilant about his wellbeing. The dream from which I'd awoken that night offered no particular clues, but I still remember it with astonishing clarity.  I dreamed we were at the Davenport Road home of our friends Danny and Madeleine, and there were quite a number of other guests there as well.  In my dream, there was a glass transom above the archway between their living room and dining room, and beside the archway was a ladder.  I climbed the ladder and wrote on the glass with my finger:

I turn and study faces in the places you have been
To see if any traces of you yet remain therein.
You left on me your fingerprint, imprimatur and sign.
I wonder if you touched their life as much as you touched mine.

This is when I was startled awake, and knew I had to write it down. I also noted the date and time, and the title You-Logy came to me, although I hadn't written a title on the transom in my dream.

When we eventually woke up, I told Ivaan about the dream and read him what I had written.  We were both so unnerved that he asked me to rewrite it in a special book I kept for important notes.

Rereading it now, I still feel there was something prophetic about it. Ivaan's second stroke occurred later that year, in the early hours of the morning. Again, I was startled awake, in that same room, in that same bed, by the realization that Ivaan was in distress, and things were never the same again.

WHAT HE SAVED

Through decembers blustery cold
and sleet and dead of night
when blasts and torrents scratch
and bite and tear
The vision of a viking in navy suede
and black riders boots
is bearded and smokes hard
upon his pipe
Perchance to ward off the evil gusts.

By the light and warm
and hum of an electric fire
The mighty Norseman sheds his animal skins
and puffs away in wrinkled red and blue
A placid smile upon his Russian countenance

Who has seen the suns
possessive rays upon the  bearded one?
Their friendly fingers wrestling at his hair
What of the summers Russian?
Does he shed his denim
and sleep in a black t-shirt in the sun
Oblivious to the outstretched arms of Helios
Till it, too, creeps away unseen?

And does he don his winters leather
and draw in his eyebrows
To meet the onslaught
of decembers blustery cold -
A viking in his prime?

- I wrote this about Ivaan when I was 17.  I only wrote one copy, in fountain pen on a sheet of airmail paper, and then I forgot all about it. 
Forty years later, a couple of years after his death,  I was leafing through one of his journals, and a thin white sheet of folded airmail paper fell out. I've always been surprised, reading his early journals, to find references to myself and my family.  Incidents that I'd long forgotten are mentioned, including a reference to Ivaan's first meeting with my father, in 1969. I suppose I must have given Ivaan my only copy of this poem, and I am impressed and touched that he kept it safe for the rest of his life.