A Toronto-based singer-songwriter playing Nanaimo next week has blended abstract art with music for her latest album.
Although Shawna Caspi’s Hurricane Coming came out in 2021 and received nominations for the 2022 Ontario Folk Music Awards’ Album of the Year and the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards’ Contemporary Album of the Year, the musician considers her upcoming Island tour as a belated celebration for its release.
For her fifth album, the musician said she experimented with the ambitious endeavour of creating abstract paintings that are individually in tune with all 10 songs.
“This album has a really big visual art component,” she said, adding that she’s integrated artwork and music before. “I wanted to do that again, but I wanted to take it a little bit further. So for this project, I created a painting that was inspired by every song on the album… and I used techniques that I have never used before.”
Caspi said she found the painting process ran parallel to the songwriting for Hurricane Coming.
“I was writing songs that started with the music rather than the lyrics, which was unusual for me. And I was building the song in a way that felt very ‘painter-ly,’”she said. “It started a little bit fuzzy and then I kept adding details and watched the picture form as a song.”
On top of being inspired by the song itself, the musician said she still wanted each painting to have a structure related to the song, and so she assigned an art or craft form that she felt had a connection to her music.
“There’s a song about trying to find a place of home, and the craft form I chose was quilting. So the painting kind of looks like a quilt,” she said. “There’s another song about being honest and putting your whole story forward when meeting someone, and I chose the craft of visible mending, which is like sewing and mending fabric on the front side so you can see the patch – like showing your scars.”
Each song’s painting was then turned into a postcard that were printed with individual download codes, which allowed the complete album to be purchased as a collection of postcards.
Although the musician said her music may come out as “rather dark” since her songwriting focuses on humanitarian issues, she said her music is about honesty and vulnerability and she always strives to find a vein of light and hope.
With each live performance, Caspi aims to create a comfortable and intimate atmosphere, which is why she favours smaller house shows rather than larger venues so she can more easily see and interact with the audience. “I want people to come and just be able to relax and let go of everything and hopefully find some connection and some way of feeling less alone in the world,” the musician said.
Caspi returns to Nanaimo on Wednesday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. as her first stop on an Island tour, with the concert’s location provided at the time of ticket purchase. She will also play Cumberland on April 13, North Saanich on April 14, Sooke on April 15 and Victoria on April 16. Further information on the singer-songwriter can be found at www.shawnacaspi.com, and tickets for the Nanaimo show can be purchased online through www.eventbrite.ca.
READ MORE: Toronto singer-songwriter Shawna Caspi makes Nanaimo debut at Unitarian Hall
mandy.moraes@nanaimobulletin.com
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