As you might remember from the Canada Day post, we were quite excited about the pictures we had taken with the Six String Nation guitar. Well, they arrived Wednesday, and here they are for your enjoyment. But first, some long-winded rambling!
My favourite part of the shoot was when Cole was allowed to hold the guitar by himself. He had only been walking for a few weeks and was very unsteady on his feet. Alex and I held the guitar by the headstock at first, but were quickly told, “Let go! It’ll be fine!” This is a one-of-a-kind guitar 10 years in the making. I was reluctant, but ultimately we did let go. Cole loved it. The independence. The feeling of being in the spotlight. In the pictures it looks like he’s grabbing the strings, and he IS— to play them! He knows about guitars because of me, and started plucking away. So cute, so fun. You’ll see one shot in which I thought he was losing his balance and I leaped in to keep the guitar safe.
It’s honestly just as easy to view the pictures on the Flickr stream, and if you’re Flickr-type people who want to favourite any of them, obviously that’s the way to go. Also for people with slower internet, the pics are smaller and load more quickly. As an added bonus, you can then navigate into the series at large (36K pics?) and see some great shots! The link to the first one in our series is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixstringnation/4860329198/in/photostream (the rest of the series is in chronological order which is to the LEFT, not the right. 
Press the “newer” button).
Something you should know about the Six String Nation Guitar (which is officially nicknamed “Voyageur”) that you might not glean from the website (www.sixstringnation.com) is that this is a labour of love and Canadiana that is horrendously under-funded. I don’t claim to know the whole story, but my understanding is that in the last 11 years since it was just a crazy idea, there have been many promises for funding along the way that were never fulfilled, and applications for government arts and culture grants that somehow went rejected. Still the creator persisted, with the result being a wonderful piece of art (it plays nicely, too!) as well as an amazing photo series. There is a book available, which you can buy in stores or online at Amazon or Chapters/Indigo.
It seems like the government might have finally warmed up a bit; I’ll have to ask Jowi if I ever see him. There is a commemorative coin that has been minted, (available with a full presentation package), and I know that the NCC was one of the sponsors at least of the Canada Day tent and photo session where we got these photos taken.
Update: Jowi has let me know that the government has not in fact warmed up. Which is really quite a shame. In my opinion, if it’s a project worthy of minting a commemorative coin over, it should be getting (and should have gotten all along) a lot more support.
I don’t mean to sound like an ad for the products associated with the venture, but I think that an effort like this deserves support. Alex and I will be buying the book. There’s good ol’ fashioned donations, too.
If anyone thinks they want a high quality archival print (without the logo tags of course), they’re $45 and I can set that up for you with Jowi.
Enough of my yammering! On to the photos!
Looks like a third generation guitar player in the works
Uncle Len