Swan House
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for Gary and Malgorzata
Double Double Winter 3, 2019<br />
<strong>Swan</strong> <strong>House</strong><br />
A two-day visit to <strong>Swan</strong> <strong>House</strong> at Napanee<br />
Photographs by Lee Ka-sing<br />
Words by Holly Lee<br />
Contents based on the<br />
Double Double electronic magazine<br />
Issue 1220-2019 with additional materials<br />
First edition<br />
December, 2021<br />
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in<br />
Publication<br />
Photography, Poetry<br />
ISBN: 978-1-989845-19-6<br />
Design by DOUBLE DOUBLE studio<br />
<strong>Swan</strong> <strong>House</strong><br />
Copyright © Lee Ka-sing 2021<br />
All Rights Reserved<br />
Lee Ka-sing’s official website:<br />
www.leekasing.com<br />
For information about permission to reproduce<br />
material from this book<br />
write to mail@oceanpounds.com<br />
Published by OCEAN POUNDS<br />
50 Gladstone Avenue, Toronto,<br />
Ontario, Canada M6J 3K6<br />
www.oceanpounds.com
a suite of 166 photographs<br />
taken at <strong>Swan</strong> <strong>House</strong><br />
from December 11 to 13, 2019<br />
by Lee Ka-sing
G and M live in a paranoid small town where they avoid the<br />
community and prefer the warmth, beauty and tranquility inside<br />
their lovely Victorian home with a legion of eight cats: Orlando,<br />
G’s favourite rescued cat, Emily (Dickinson), Teapot or Teepee, who<br />
appears in one of his drawings, Grigio (the colour of the cat), Lew<br />
(Lewis Carroll), Melville (Herman), Vita (Sackville-West), and Amber,<br />
who loathes visitors and hides in the poetry room on the second floor<br />
as long as the guests are inside the house - which by all means is a<br />
small paradise, and from the nearby farmers market M would bring<br />
back all sorts of Winter squash: acorn, buttercup butternut, dumpling,<br />
hubbard, pumpkin, kabocha and spaghetti, stacking them up on the<br />
tables in such ways that they look like pieces of art. Now the aromatic<br />
smells of scones and coffee permeate the kitchen, suggesting that<br />
M is preparing for today’s special cooking - a day-long feast for G’s<br />
birthday, and as a reminder, a hand-written note is taped on the door<br />
of the kitchen cabinet: Breakfast - banana rose-water-scented scones<br />
with cardamon-scented coffee; Lunch - toasted bagels with cream<br />
cheese, adding wild smoked salmon, rounds of red onion, cucumber<br />
slices and capers; Dinner - squash gnocchi in mushroom cream<br />
sauce, warm red cabbage salad; Desert: poached pears in spiced<br />
pomegranate juice, and at the bottom of the paper, M also reminds<br />
herself in red the bottle of rose wine in the refrigerator, a sparkling<br />
wine she hand-picked to celebrate G’s 81st birthday. Deep down she<br />
believes G’s unspoken love and admiration of every single meal she<br />
has cooked, a blessed life together, endowed with good, healthy<br />
food year-long, so much and so run-over that he can easily do away<br />
with his birthday as the reason for the all-day feast, and proudly<br />
proclaim, EVERYDAY IS A FEAST. (Holly Lee)
Lee Ka-sing, a photo-based artist grew up in Hong Kong and resides in Toronto, Canada<br />
since 1997. He was awarded “Artist of the Year” (1989) by the Hong Kong Artists’<br />
Guild, and the Fellowship for Artistic Development (1999) presented by Hong Kong Arts<br />
Development Council. Selected monographs include Thirty-one Photographs, Forty Poems<br />
- photographs 1995-98, The Language of Fruits and Vegetables, De ci de là des choses.<br />
Lee Ka-sing’s work is in private and public institutions and museum collections such as the<br />
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, M+ Museum and the Hong Kong Heritage<br />
Museum.<br />
Holly Lee is from Hong Kong, lives and works in Toronto since 1997. From the early<br />
eighties she worked as a professional photographer and continuing a career for almost<br />
twenty years. In Toronto she spent close to two decades managing galleries, before<br />
retreating from gallery administration to focus on writing in 2019. She has two poetry<br />
books published: Nine Years 九 年 (2020) and The Air is like a Butterfly (2021).