Veronica Hess Shelford
Name: Veronica (Hess) Shelford
Age Now: 64
Web Page URL: www.cufracliffs.com and www.moorehillgraphics.com
Marital status: married
Children: none
Diplomas and certificates acquired since graduating from MRHS: B.A. from McGill
Present or Last Job (Company, Position, Year of retirement): Semi-retired from self-employment, still running small B&B and doing occasional graphics jobs.
Other jobs you have held: teaching, clerical, administrative, research, potter
Most fun job you ever held: potting, definitely. No contest! In fact, anything to do with clay.
If retired how do you keep busy? More like, how do you find a moment to yourself? I do a lot of community work, love my garden, and read a lot. Thetis Island is a lovely place (there are a few pictures at our B&B website, at http://www.thetisisland.net/business/cufracliffs/aboutthetis.html).
Health: Much improved since two corneal transplants and reconstruction of my ears. Recently diagnosed with Post Polio Syndrome although I suspect it has been developing for the last 15 years, which did eventually put an end to working with clay, which I regret but that's life. Too busy to dwell on it.
Family members who are now deceased: my dad, who died in '93, and mom who died in 2011.
Most memorable moment at MRHS: My long-term memory is lousy. But I definitely remember being yelled at by Miss Theobald more than once. And band with Doc Jones was fun. And Mr. Logan saved my bacon by giving me extra lessons in Latin, so I could pass the prerequisites and not have to take it at McGill.
Dumbest moment at MRHS: too many to count, and undoubtedly more than I remember...
Any other info you wish to share......
In case there is anyone out there who remembers my family, here's us all together at Christmas five years ago. From left to right: Graeme (my husband), Vevy Hess (my mother, 90 in the photo), Claire (sister-in-law), Matt (brother), Stephen (nephew), Penn (Bouvier/Wolfhound/Shepherd cross) and me. Location is my mother's living room in her home in Parksville, BC.
Below are a couple of pictures from a memorable course I took at MISSA (Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts) in 2001. It was a week on sculpting the human head. We started from a skull, and had to build a head in clay from the skull up, learning all the muscles etc as we went along. Sounds gruesome but it didn't feel that way at the time—it was absolutely fascinating, and we felt nothing but empathy and gratitude to the people whose bones we met and got to know. I felt particularly privileged to work from a skull that was at least 500 years old, from the dismantled graveyard of a monastery in Denmark (our teacher, Heather Spears, is from there.) The first shot was fairly early in the construction process, and the second was almost finished. I highly recommend MISSA, by the way—they have some great courses.
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