Crystal Nielson - out of doors

Crystal Nielsen started on her creative career path at an early age. Her father has drawings she created when she was two. The artist
and arts educator grew up in Port Arthur, but her father’s work took the family on the road.

Settling when she was young in Nova Scotia proved to be inspirational and transformational for Crystal. She loved the sea and always wondered what she would discover along its shoreline. “Living by the ocean was the best playground ever. “

“I want to awaken a person’s creative expression – I enjoy observing their delight and discoveries.”

Play is still important to Crystal. As an adult, her life and work has taken her to many communities.

“I like to go out and discover, then come back home.” Of all the places she has explored or lived in Canada, Northern Ontario, Yukon, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia are favourites because of the land, the outdoors, the opportunities for adventure and peace and tranquility. Thunder Bay is now home. It is a community that Crystal appreciates for its natural surroundings and its people. Both serve as a constant source of inspiration for her work and her soul. A family network continues to ground her and inspire her to teach and create in a variety of ways.

Crystal’s father and grandfather are great influences in her art and creative process. Her grandfather, Bent Nielsen, was sponsored to come to Canada and settled with the Pike family on Wolf Island. He later farmed in the Slate River Valley. The artistic tradition has been passed through the generations. Crystal’s great-grandmother and her sister hand-painted Royal Copenhagen plates and her great uncle was also a painter in Denmark.

Her grandmother Oda Nielsen, taught Crystal how to express herself with her hands. She learned how to embroider and knit. Her grandmother also taught her the basics of Danish cooking and baking. Crystal still feels that her artistry comes out when she is in the kitchen.

“We have to eat, but we can make a meal visually beautiful. You eat with your eyes,” she says. “Sometimes in the kitchen I’ll challenge myself to cook a meal with everything of the same colour – like orange. I’ll combine pumpkin, carrots, oranges and curry to make a soup. Or all the ingredients will have to start with the same letter. If “L” is the letter, I’ll create something using lemons, limes…”

True to her Danish roots, Crystal needs to be near the woods and the water. Her father still lives in the home she grew up in and the urban greenspace across from his home still exists today. These pockets of nature within the city are treasures, Crystal believes.

With a life spent in the pursuit of all things creative, Crystal teaches educators to be creative. Children’s drawings are free, colourful, exciting and meaningful. When they get a little older, people naturally become more critical of themselves and their art. She has advice for those who don’t feel they have an inner artist waiting to be discovered. “We are all creative. When you cook you are pleasing your inner artist. You are creating something enticing to eat and to look at. How you choose to set the table, pick flowers from the yard, mix the colours of vegetables and meat on a plate is like mixing the colours on an artist’s palette. “All of us are programmed to create,” she reflects.

“Before written language, recorded stories and memories were carved in stone, painted upon cave walls with symbolized images. Being creative is in all of us. As kids or adults, when we connect with the artist inside it feels good and it can be freeing. Some people do it in subtle ways while others go all-out,” she adds.

For inspiration, Crystal looks to her favourite artists, Mother Nature, Jennifer Garrett and Arthur Shilling.

As an adult, it can be fun to create something without the expectation of a final mark. Crystal encourages adults to stop thinking about the finished product. To help leap the hurdles of our self-criticism and perfectionism, she suggests thinking about how you feel when you are making something. Is it fun? Is it exciting? Is it meditative or peaceful? Is it memory making? Play with colour and texture. Create and enjoy. Having fun in the process is the most important lesson. Remember that it’s a masterpiece to you. You know the story of its creation. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a new recipe for a pie you’ve tweaked yourself or an oil painting you’ve created based on your interpretation of a favourite Rolling Stones song. The key, according to Crystal, is to forget the need for getting someone else’s approval of what you create. “The process of art making, the creativity, the imagination is to be valued and cherished. A person’s creativity is as unique and individual as each snowflake that falls upon a child’s tongue. We all possess imaginations—folks may need a nudge, a gentle invite to navigate through the arts. Engage your senses again, like we did as children, exploring and discovering our environment through taste, touch, smell, sound and seeing.”

Crystal has been involved in arts education for a long time. “The arts are vital to a community,” she comments. “The arts record and archive culture…since time began, through our hands, our bodies, our voice. All of the artforms are accessible to us. They always have been, we need to revisit them. They niggle our memories of dance, song, voice, mark making, and role playing. As children we all scribbled, drew on walls, paper whatever surface was around us to express through our hands.” And through art, adults can learn to be as freely expressive as a non-critical child. She has worked with people of all ages, from young children to the elderly. She enjoys the experience of helping people remove those mental blocks and “just do it”. By introducing participants to the tools they can use to create, she can then step back to see what happens.

Crystal encourages her students to gather bits of inspiration. She suggests leafing through magazines and newspapers, or going out in nature for an inspiring walk. Pick up a leaf on the ground or a stick you used to stir your coffee and include those pieces in a gathering. It can help you to mix a colour or create a combination of materials that speak to you. You can celebrate something that appeals to you by trying to recreate it in your own way.

Crystal is leading a workshop called “I Can’t Even Draw a Stickman” at the Painted Turtle Art Studio on Cumberland Street. That workshop was inspired by the lament of a young teacher who was terrified by the thought of having to teach art to a Grade 5 class in British Columbia. Crystal created the workshop for that class in BC, then brought it to 200 teachers in Windsor. She continues to flesh out the workshop as she, in turn, learns from each group that she leads in the process. “I want to awaken a person’s creative expression-I enjoy observing their delight and discoveries,” she remarks.

As an artist, Crystal is always learning as well. She has had ample time to reflect and learn how to do things differently since the time of “The Happening.” Almost two years ago, Crystal was crossing the street when she was hit by a car. She remembers putting her hands out instinctively. She was left with a crushed left tibia, a broken right arm and head trauma. Now, with a rebuilt leg, her running days are behind her. “Before The Happening I used to run with the dogs a couple of times a day. I especially loved winter running in the woods. The cold air was a gift and the feeling after a run was exhilarating.”

“I realized that because of The Happening I lost a lot of control with my life. I thought the surgeon could rebuild my leg so I could run again, but he couldn’t. But I did learn to walk again. I now have a great appreciation for the challenges that someone with a physical challenge lives with. When I was using a walker, the sidewalks were difficult. I felt like I was in a cardboard box, looking through glass at the outside. I wanted so badly to break out of it and run.”

After The Happening, she realized that painting would be difficult because of her injured painting arm. However, she feels as though she had already prepared herself, because years before she had painted a series of paintings with her left hand. After the accident, she had to learn to use that hand for brushing her teeth and eating. She has not yet returned to painting fully as before. . Because she cannot carry heavy objects she has sold her glass sculpting and silversmithing equipment. She is taking it one step at a time.

During her recuperation, her daughter Ashley and son Bryce inspired and encouraged her as an artist and mother. “My daughter’s black and white photographs were so beautiful. Exploring in black and white was a step out for me. I love colour.”

Crystal is learning how to do things again and is working new physical opportunities into her day and her recuperation. She now gets on a bike but will only ride where there are no cars nearby. She is excited because her surgeon has given her the green light to go cross–country skiing this winter (her favourite season). “Nature is a library of learning. Lake Superior is a great source of healing for me,” she shares. She is working on going back to painting. Her inspiration at the moment is a photograph of her boyfriend’s dog, Ursus, with her head inside a bucket of blueberries. She and Ursus were alone on a hill in Nipigon, picking blueberries for six or seven hours. The photograph still makes her laugh and remember that wonderful connection with nature. The most important part of her recuperation is being outdoors. “I dislike being inside a gym,”
she says. “I have to go outside for healing.”

She feels that life has taught her an important lesson about control. “We can always stop things. Sometimes we have to go around the road blocks. Sometimes you think you know what your road is, but there are times when the way you thought things were going goes off-track. Look for stepping stones to get through. We write the chapters in our lives. You’re the author of your own life story.”

Crystal’s journey has offered her a chance to step back, to learn again and to appreciate her life. Taking the opportunity to take stock of our lives and to approach things anew is something we can all learn from her. It’s Crystal-clear.

Nancy Angus is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Bayview. Contact her at nangus@shaw.ca.