Seven Stars for the Soul's Seven Holy Stations

2003, Video, 15:00 (Colour, Stereo)

by Craig Francis Power

Inspired by John Thompson, poet and professor who committed suicide in Sackville, NB in 1976. Thompson fasinated me with the number of artistic cliches he embodied. Using his life and work as a starting point for my own explorations, I quickly became interested in the sort of spiritual purity that Thompson was seeking in his poetry. Country music seemed an appropriate tool by which I could talk about these things without alienating the viewer. Since Thompson's life was so tragic and had so much in common with the themes of old country songs, I found myself drawn to the lyrical content with the intention of using them as a soundtrack for the video. Like the narrators of the songs, Thompson, through his own vices was struggling between redemption and further self destruction. As the project progressed I became interested in how landscape and ideas about the rural help shape identity. The rural took on greater importance in my exploration of not just what it means to be an arist, but also how things like landscape and purity help form regional and national identity.

ISBN 978-1-55467-448-0