Kiss Everlasting

11" x 7"

  Needlepoint

  Summer 2001

Nelson, British Columbia

Jim Kogelheide

Kiss Everlasting

What is the message in a peace like this,

a peace that eternalizes a kiss?

It's not hidden, but everywhere, you see!

For I've wrapped it around each thread,

sometimes two times... most times three.

With every thread that's been inlaid,

echoes of your name were heard,

so that no one could hear but me.

And as each vibration entered my ear,

I stitched a kiss everlasting,

to see what a kiss that kiss would be.

A kiss that knocks me off my feet,

moving my world around,

with all the threads that have been set free.

A love entwined,

in this kiss in time,

foreshadowing all the kisses that are yet to be!

Jim Kogelheide

2001

Kiss Everlasting

Before the I-phone and the selfie, people would simply hold their camera at arm’s length and hope to get a decent photo… sometimes having to wait a long time until the roll of film was finished and then developed.  The photograph that I used to create this art peace was one such photo.

Between 1999 and 2000 my wife and I were living in Neepawa, Manitoba as I worked on my Cross-Canada art project ‘Canada:Glorious To Be’.  My wife spent the summer and fall of 1999 working at a local golf course.  During the winter, she found other employment, but continued to keep in contact with her previous employer and the friends that she had made.

In the spring of 2000, the golf course was having a special Mother’s Day event and I decided to take Joanne out for a day of golfing followed by a wonderful feast.  This was the first and only time that we have ever golfed and we had a great time.

As we were walking through the course, I thought that it would be fun to take a picture of me giving Jo’ a kiss on the cheek and so the photo that inspired this art peace was born.  When we finally got the photos developed we both laughed because part of Jo’s face and almost all of my face was missing.  When I created this art peace, I was honouring my love for my wife as well as the tens of thousands of poorly taken photos that exist in other people’s photo collections, around the world!

A couple of years later, we were living in Nelson, British Columbia.  It was early summer and our wedding anniversary was just a couple of months away.  While living in B.C., I started teaching myself how to create art using needlepoint techniques.  I would blend my own thread colours together and in most cases I would stray away from the popular techniques – such as cross-stitch – and develop my own techniques for applying the threads to the backing fabric.

As you can see from this detail, I had created what I termed ‘the log stitch’, where rows of horizontal or vertical stitches create ‘logs’ of varying length.  Detailing the branches of the trees was a very challenging task and took a lot of concentration.  Actually, this whole art peace took a lot of concentration as there is so much detail found with Joanne’s hair colouring, the river and the banks of the river.  The small tree to the left side (with the cream coloured bark) was the most challenging as I had to lay down the thread colours of the background at the same time and there are six changes in background colour in this area of the image – 3 shades of grass, 1 shade of evergreen, the sky and a cloud.  The easiest parts to do where the large spaces of clouds and sky and some of the grass that maintain a constant colour with little blending.

You’ll notice that there are three groupings of evergreen trees in this image.  Did you happen to notice the change in colour on the landscape that shows the shadows of these trees?  As Mother’s Day is in the early part of May, most trees have not yet grown their summer leaves, thus the leafless trees in this image.

Joanne and I were both working at the New Grand Hotel, in Nelson, while I created this anniversary art for her.  I worked the night shift at the front desk of the hotel while Jo’ worked in the bar/lounge in the evenings as a waitress.  I always brought my art to work on during the evening and while I was creating this present I had to be very careful to hide it whenever Jo’ came through the lobby of the hotel. 

The rest of the staff knew what I was working on and knew that this was a secret and occasionally one of them would come running into the lobby saying, “Jim, Joanne’s coming down the hallway!  Hide your art – quickly!!”

Joanne and I had a special anniversary dinner in our apartment, that year, and after we had eaten, I gave her this present.  The next day, we had another special meal at the hotel, so that we could show the rest of the staff the final artwork, now that it had been matted and framed.  Everyone loved it and loved the fact that Joanne and I were (and still are) such a great couple!

Jim Kogelheide

2015