52nd ANNUAL GEM & MINERAL SHOW

Beautiful sunny autumn afternoon, I got some gorgeous shots of my neighborhood. I love that Montreal no longer uses pesticides, beautiful to see nature being allowed to be natural.

The 52nd annual Gem & Mineral Show finishes this Sunday, at Place Bonaventure. I went today with my fiancee, I have only been once before, which I think was in 2008, but at that time it was at the hippodrome. I am really happy to say that Place Bonaventure is only a ten minute walk from our home. Last time, I had to walk for 20 minutes in a blizzard (same time of the year), thank-fully ol'Jack-Frost is still hiding somewhere in the North Pole!

I fantasize about one day being able to buy something really large and not very practical from the rock & gem show. My fiancee thinks I am nuts, I admit, going to the show affects me like a fevor. Or like one would expect of the tales of how people reacted when they discovered the rivers of North America had gold littered in them like rocks. For me though it's an incredible visual stimulus of texture, colour, light and shadow. While I may not paint these specific things, it very much inspires me in my art. 

This piece of petrified wood was huge and incredible. It reminds me that there is a forest of petrified trees which I believe is located in the states. I would love to go walk through that forest. Can you imagine? Everything turned to crystal & stone. I am in awe of what mother nature produces, it blows my mind to think about how crystals grow, creatures & plants fossolize, and can take thousands or millions of years to come to be as we see it today.



Les Exclusivites Annie



My step-dad calls the following stone a "thunder egg", I guess it's what the local indigenous people call them. I remember being out in the woods with him swimming in a pool in the river and him pointing out to me these round, oval stones and explaining that if we were to carefully crack one open, it would be full of crystals. I was maybe 10 or 11, so this was pretty magical to me at the time (especially considering I was voraciously reading books about magical adventures that involved dragons, faerie and crossing dimensions).