Hello to the Friends of Venus Sophia Tea Room,

On this lovely sunny afternoon, we all at Venus Sophia send you our greetings!

As I have just updated our mailing list which is growing and growing, I thought I would take this opportunity to send out a few updates from our last Tea Room News.

We are happy to tell you that the music is evolving and simply beautiful at the tea room.  On Sundays, we have Satori Strings with Elizabeth, Catheryn and Zachary, playing violin, viola and cello.  We also have Swing on By with Dick Pollard and fellow musicians, playing saxophone, bass and rhythm guitar.  The new addition is Melody and Elizabeth from SheNanigan playing and singing beautiful harmonious celtic songs on Fridays.  Below is the list of exact dates and times.  Mark your calendars and plan to come for some refreshment and nourishment on many levels.

Friday, July 23, 2-4 p.m., Melody and Elizabeth, Celtic

Sunday, July 25, 2-4 p.m., Satori Strings, Classical

Sunday, July 25, 4-6 p.m., Swing on By, Swing

Sunday, August 1, 2-4 p.m., Satori Strings, Classical

Sunday, August 8, 2-4 p.m., Satori Strings, Classical

Sunday, August 15, 4-6 p.m., Swing on By, Swing

Sunday, August 22, 2-4 p.m., Satori Strings, Classical

Sunday, August 29, 6-4 p.m., Swing on By, Swing

Melody and Elizabeth will also be playing Fridays in August.  Please check our home page at:  www.VenusSophia.com for exact dates.

I believe I mentioned in our last newsletter that we are going to be babysitting a piano from the Conservatory of Music.  It is still coming and when it does, we will be scheduling pianists to also play at the tea room.  We are very much looking forward to offering opportunities to students from the Conservatory to come and play at Venus Sophia.  And we are just downright delighted at this opportunity which will bring a sense of community to the tea room.  More updates about that coming soon!

Summer in the tea room is delightful!  It is light-filled, open and simply lovely.  The fans are twirling overhead circulating the fresh air blown in from the sea…….  The uplifting music, the organic teas and coffees, and artistic menu continue to bring joy to many.  Now that summer has arrived we are also making our very own iced teas.  We also offer matcha, mocha, strawberry and chai latte frappes, as well as all natural fruit smoothies:  mango, peach, banana and raspberry.  They are thirst-quenching and utterly refreshing.  As usual we serve tea all day in our delightful tea pots and tea cups. And the baked goods are a pure delight to gaze upon and consume.  We offer gluten-free options for lunch and for desserts.  We have a few vegan options as well as some raw food options.  The wonderful thing is that everyone can find something at Venus Sophia.

Our boutique is once again filled with Blue Sky Clothing.  We have organic bamboo yoga and leisure wear, so smooth and natural for your skin.  We have delightfully cool summer dresses and jackets, hand-painted tops and lots of summer purses.  And the important news is that we can now order sizing if what you are looking for is missing.  So please stop by, I’m sure you will enjoy the selection with all sizes available.  One last note about the boutique is that we also have very sweet fairy dresses perfect for children and grandchildren….we often have little girls enter the tea room and leave as fairies…..incredibly cute!

If any of you are following us on our website or facebook page (Venus Sophia Tea Room Group Page), you will know that we have had another delightful article written about us in Monday Magazine.  Many, many people have come and enjoyed the piece.  Please check it out if you missed it.  It is in the Canada Day edition, which you can find online.
http://mondaymag.com/articles/category-archive/category/food-and-life/ Check out the article about us called: A Touch of Class

Our Art Galleries continue to delight everyone.  The Forests of Light series has begun to find a home.  We are selling many paintings.  The quality of light in the old growth and rain forests is simply stunning.  Dianne Ostoich, who is the artist, has lowered her prices so that individuals who love her work, can now take them home.  There are many happy art lovers grateful to her.  Havana Angels, in our front gallery, has also captured the imagination of many.  Many an individual has come and sat down to a nice pot of tea gazing and taking in the beauty and imagery of Laurie Baxter’s photography.  We have decided to extend their stay in the galleries due to popular demand.  We hope you will take a moment to stop by, find a moment of entering into the artistry and even consider supporting the artist while treating yourself to a lovely treat from the tea room.

Please keep us in mind when you are in the mood to buy some organic teas for home.  We offer lovely, lovely choices in beautiful red tins and bags complete with beautiful rose labels.  Our teas and tea sales have become quite popular for everyone–and we are happily offering you daily packaged fresh teas.  We are also offering the exquisite Oso Negro organic beans shipped to us fresh after roasting……we are happy to be developing a hardcore following for those beans!

Our final happy announcement is that we are going to be launching our new website in the next few weeks.  I am incredibly excited about it.  I love our current one and I love the imagination to continue creating….so keep your eyes on our webpage and one day you will open it and experience pure joy I’m sure…..

That’s all for now.  Thank you for taking the time to visit with us through our newsletter and we look forward to seeing you soon in Venus Sophia Tea Room….where beauty abounds, love of life radiates and living in wisdom is a way of life…..tea’s on…see you soon….

In peace and friendship,

Jill RoseMary

Venus Sophia Tea Room
540 Fisgard–In the heart of Chinatown
250-590-3953

www.VenusSophia.com
Venus Sophia Facebook Group Page
Find us on Twitter

A place that is prepared for you to enter and be still, or have a moment of reflection, or an opportunity to write or draw or plan a long-overdue conversation with a friend or partner.

Imagine a space that is blossoming in roses and held in sanctuary with ivory tones.

Havana Angels and Forests of Light filling the art galleries.

Beautiful summer garments awaiting for you to be enwrapped.

Soft music to lift your senses and open your heart.

Tea fragrances to fill your soul.  Tea pots to bring beauty to the sharing of tea.

And a living wisdom weaving an etheric thread of belonging in and out of every detail, every gesture, every awareness of life that is essential.

Just imagine a tea room open and light-filled, breezy and fresh, warm and inviting, created and held, so the sharing of tea bears meaning, so the conversations or gazes of interest bear fruit and friendship, so a peacefulness can enter the day, your day, our day….so subtle, yet present, quickening something deep inside so  that a memory, a thread of awareness, a joy emerges bringing to the space more light, more energy, more happiness….

Venus Sophia Tea Room….a place to be and become, an environment to share and be shared, an oasis where the wellsprings of life overflow into tea cups and a peacefulness can grow.

Blue Sky Clothing summer fashions are in the boutique.

Our lovely tea tins are filled and ready for purchase.

Tomorrow, Sunday, is Celtic music from 3 to 5 p.m.

We have organic matcha, mocha and chai frappes.

We serve all natural fruit smoothies.

All our teas are fragrant, full bodied and organic.

All our coffees are fair trade and organic.

We serve tea in lovely teapots with lovely tea cups.

What an interesting word–vessel.  The dictionary defines it as:

A person regarded as a holder or receiver of something, especially something nonmaterial: a vessel of grace.

Venus Sophia Tea Room is just that a vessel, an environment prepared to uphold an intention, prepared to contain and convey it’s namesake Venus Sophia, a vessel of graceful living wisdom, radiating love and inner beauty.  It also has vessels to hold water and warmth, tea and substance.  Venus Sophia is like a heart but with a fifth chamber that opens into the soul life, into an interior place where sanctuary, the wellsprings of life and the essence of light and warmth can be held and perceived within and around.

Venus Sophia is a world of vessels that open into environments.  There are not only tea leaves to be read in tea cups, there are waters of life to enter into, chambers to discover and open, music to hear, light to heal and warmth to embrace and be embraced by.

Venus Sophia Tea Room is full and vast and deep.  It offers tea in the vessel of life.

Venus Sophia Teas are all organic.  We have a wonderful selection of black, black flavoured, green, green flavoured, white, oolong, pu ehr, and herbal teas.  They are packaged in beautiful, reusable red tins complete with a Venus Sophia Organic Tea eye-catching tea label.

Organic Teas maintain a smaller environmental footprint.

How does an organic tea farm operate?

• Abstinence from using any synthetic fertilizer, pesticide or herbicide.
• Environmental protection of lands surrounding the gardens.
• Replenishment and maintenance of garden soil fertility using natural means.
• Promoting and maintaining biodiversity in the gardens and surrounding lands.

We love the teas we have to offer you.  Stop in and see them all on display.  Your senses will dance in delight as you see and smell the tea aromas laid out for your artistic and tea experience pleasure.

Our teas are perfect gifts for friends.  Remember us for wedding favours.  We would be happy to sit down with you and plan your special favours for your special day.

We are open 7 days a week for your retail tea purchases and for you to come, sit down, and have a nice pot of organic tea.

All businesses are not grown out of the premise that there is something to sell and something to gain.  However, a lot of business is connected to making money, giving the public what it wants and always considering the bottom line.  In one aspect of business, this is so.

But there are other ways of growing a business.  There are other starting points and other considerations.

Venus Sophia Tea Room is unique in that the starting premise is to create a living space of beauty held open for the purpose of welcoming others to enter into the tea room.  By entering into something, there is the possibility to perceive environments or remember moments or parts of ourselves often missed or passed over in the racing pace of the day. The exchange of money in this setting, then, is to support the space, the created environment, not just a product or service.

Venus Sophia Tea Room has the unique interest in offering a sanctuary or oasis in one’s day where a calm cup of tea, a meaningful conversation, a sense of wonder or imagination can bubble up from the wellsprings of life to refresh or bring insight to one’s day.

We are not meant to be a fast-paced, service establishment, nor are we offering to make you happy through expectations.  Instead, we are unique in that we prepare an open space for you to enter into where something different transpires….an awareness that substances and essences of that which is living inside of us can be seen outwardly in the beauty and light around us, in the interest we cultivate, in the wisdom that weaves and connects and inspires all of us.  We cultivate the art of accompaniment which, we feel, in some small way can contribute to the culture of peace.

The world is filled with consumerism.  Venus Sophia Tea Room is interested in the arts of compassion, empathy, radiating love, genuine interest, living the wisdom, unfolding the inner beauty, in a place prepared to share with others the understanding that all around us, each and every day, there are challenges beyond our control.  But by entering into the tea room, one can find a moment of repose, a place where imagination can flourish, a lovely conversation that fills one’s heart or brings understanding, music to uplift, tea to enrich, good food to nourish, garments to enwrap, treasures for the soul, and others partaking in the beauty of sharing a moment, sharing a pot of tea, and sharing everyday life together out of a sense of dignity and common purpose.

Welcome into the tea room.

Venus Sophia Tea Room, as many have experienced, is unique.  The nature of it is to open up like a seashell where Venus or inner beauty and radiating love and Sophia, living wisdom, steps forth and appears in this world as a presence.  The tea room then holds open that space where such things can appear, can be seen, can be experienced, but most importantly can live in the world and in each of us.

There are not many environments created to consciously behold and uphold a living beauty, a pulsing love and a living wisdom in quite the way that Venus Sophia Tea Room has set out to do.

There are many tea rituals which do hold such environments where beauty is quietly uplifted and a wisdom is followed or entered into and where love of the cultural partaking of tea is honoured.

The fusion of the tea rituals at Venus Sophia Tea Room means that a created environment has been prepared and opened where all these lovely and delicate, yet living experiences, can live each and every day in the daily rhythm and ritual of not only drinking tea, but of entering into the tea room alone, or with others.

Inside, there is a peacefulness, timeless yet soulful; heartfelt, yet conscious.  There is beauty everywhere, in the details, in the art work, in the colours and light, yet most important is not the specifics, but more the experience of its presence.  People will walk in and say there is a light, or there is an energy or there is a peacefulness….and I would say welcome to the environment of Venus Sophia Tea Room where there is an honouring of the age-old tea rituals that have been brought into a setting where what lives within them can blossom into a new place, devoted to upholding the living presence of that which is vital to life, yet unseen in the material world–radiating love, inner beauty, and a living wisdom that sustains all of life.

Imagine if everyone around the world prepared to sit down and have a cup of tea together, each out of their own culture and ritual, yet fusioned in the common purpose of living together in peace, out of love, surrounded by beauty and compelled by a living wisdom that bears within it the secrets and arts of living a healthful, a soulful and a spirited life.

Venus Sophia Tea Room sends out her invitation.

Venus Sophia has two art gallery areas.  I want to share about the back gallery.

The Forest of Light series is a very rich and deep experience of quietness, light and finding the path into the forest.  It opens up a timeless memory of moments when one has found the soltane and solace of light in the forest.  It washes one over with the rising and the setting of the golden light.  Whether it be rays of light that shine poetically through branches bringing shadows and choreography or whether it is a wash of light that brings clarity to the path, this series can’t be missed.

Dianne has given a very generous and unique opportunity to all of us by offering her collection at 50% off on this Victoria Day and for one full week.  I was surprised by her suggestion and delighted at the opportunity for all of us to take a little of the forest home with us.

How lovely to support a local artist, Dianne Ostoich, and her work.

Venus Sophia Tea Room has had an amazing response from every age group and genre of life.  It is a pearl in the rough and an oasis in a busy life.  The Tea Room went from conception into presence and she is, indeed, a lovely sight to behold.  The whitewash of limestone ridge walls and the radiance of the chandeliers offers a colour that holds within it peacefulness.  The hand-sewn cushions of the favourite chairs and the the shabby chic colour of the wooden chairs welcomes comfort and places to rest.

The response has been tremendous….and also the ability to continue to respond has been heartwarming.  For, indeed, the tearoom does not exist for itself.  It has opened to create a living space to enter into alone or with others….maybe like our own souls.  It is a place by the water’s edge that beckons reflection.  It is a place that inspires creativity.  It is a sanctuary that allows one to find peace.

Venus Sophia Tea Room has appeared in the full splendour of an inner beauty that takes one’s breath away for she is gentle, yet dignified.  Venus Sophia, bearer of radiating love, inner beauty and a living wisdom, is a place that is timeless, yet can be placed in context by an experience, or a story, or a moment while drinking tea.

Whether one goes inside of the tea room or one’s self, there is certainly a beauty to behold, a love to discover and a wisdom to be lived.  The tea room is not asking for a response, per se, but instead allowing one to find the ability to respond to such an unexpected place and experience.

We await your presence and will delight in the prospect of sharing a moment together in a place unlike any other where eloquence and elegance greet you at the door and wave goodbye at your leaving….smiling at the knowing you will return, to a place called home, to a place known as one’s heart and soul, to a place called Venus Sophia Tea Room.

Kettle’s on and the door is always open……..see you soon.

We are so excited about our May showings.  We have our front and back galleries and in each one of them, there is an amazing sight to behold. Please join us in welcoming Laurie Rae Baxter and Dianne Ostoich.

Laurie Rae Baxter has her photography series called Havana Angels.  The sepia photographs of the stone statuary are absolutely stunning. It is the first time she is showing her Havana Angels series and we are so privileged.

All prints are sold unframed.  They are digital inkjet prints made on archivel German Rag Paper.  And a book is in the gallery for your convenience and information.  Sit down in the Venus Sophia Tea Room Gallery area, enjoy a nice pot of tea and enjoy gazing into this exquisite work of art.

Laurie Rae Baxter is a professor at the University of Victoria and lives in North Saanich, BC where her Dolphin Road Studio is located.

Dianne Ostoich has her show in the back gallery which we call The Forests of Light.  All pieces are for sale and take you to a place that allows you to experience the true spirit of the West Coast rainforests.

Dianne was born and raised in Vancouver, BC, in the lap of those rainforests.  Her beginning years were spent exploring the myriad paths winding through the woods where she developed a strong love of trees.  That love radiates from her work.  Dianne, who studied at Langara College, Vancouver School of Art and University of BC, works with oil paints on canvas and with oil pastels on rag paper.  She likes to paint large canvases reflecting the size of her subject matter, but she also paints vignettes which are still able to evoke the majesty of the forest.  Dianne paints the serenity and peacefulness that nature offers us.  She invites the viewer into the canvas to walk down the pathways.  She likes especially the play of light and dark, sunlight and shadow.  As you stroll down the paths of her work you feel the heat of the sun and the coolness of the shadows.  Shafts of sunlight filter through dense groves of evergreens.  The dance of dappled light and deep shadows creates an almost abstract pattern.

Dianne has been involved with the art world for the past thirty years.  In the mid seventies, she co-founded Crown Lithographic Printers in Vancouver which was a custom printing house dedicated to producing high quality hand-pulled original lithographs.  Working in close collaboration with such artists as Jack Shadbolt, Leslie Poole, Takao Tanabe and the Haida artist Bill Reid, to name but a few, was a wonderful experience giving insight as to how each individual artist approached their art.

In the mid-eighties, she opened a gallery in conjunction with the print shop featuring local artists as well as her own work.  After running the gallery for 15 years, he demand of her work made it difficult to manage both.  Now, she happily concentrates solely on her painting.

Her works are in many private and corporate collections as well as permanent collections in universities and public museums.

We look forward to seeing you in the Gallery and Tea Room.