Collossus

Rodney Graham, Millennial Time Machine: A Landau Carriage Converted to a Mobile Camera Obscura

This Saturday I participated in a charrette for UBC Farm. It was a creative visioning exercise for marking and mapping some ideas for the future of the farm, held on the UBC campus. One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the civic penchant for comissioning (expensive) concrete monuments as public art. As a process-based artist with an aversion to creating permanent objects, the urge to leave a giant scultpure on this earth is foreign to me. However, I am intrigued by those who need to make big things. I grew up in prairie, the land of giant Canada Geese, wheat sheaves, Ukrainian Easter Eggs, Perogies, and the world's largest tomahawk in Cutknife Saskatchewan. I am entertained by the giant objets de pop created by Claes Oldenburg and his wives Pat Muschinski and Coosje van Bruggen.


A few years back I read an article (the source escapes me now) which talked about the ephemeral nature of art that was expected to last longer than it did. In fact one of Oldenburg's giant soft hamburgers had a pickle on top on which the paint was peeling. The artist was asked to supply a new pickle. It arrived a bit rumpled because C.O. had used it as a pillow in the airplane on the way to deliver it to the gallery. I love that story, but even more so now that I know it was actually his first wife, now named Patty Mucha, who did all the work sewing those mammoth soft sculptures. And she still doesn't get much credit for doing it all these years later!

These cement logs by Myfawnwy Mcleod are amusing, because they take and ephemeral object and literally make them concrete. I'm interested in the erosion of public art. Is this shadenfreude? Oh, probably.

Myfawnwy McLeod, Wood for the People

Anyhoo, at this charette one of the things that struck me was how the architects leading our group (who were amazing, BTW) needed to mark the farm from the road with a big sign, or architechtural element that got people's attention and announced "This is a farm!" I appreciate you need signage that tells people they have arrived, but in this case I prefer the subtle approach. The farm is tucked away and sheltered in a beautiful forest. The forest doesn't need to advertise what it is, it just need to be a forest. The farm doesn't need a giant blackberry (the fruit, not the gadget) or plywood rainbow to tell people they are in a beautiful place.

I mean, giant sculptures can be awesome. This new giant Kelpies by Andy Scott look brilliant. I love the fact that they actually have a function, according to the Guardian:

"Unlike Antony Gormley's sculpture outside Gateshead, the Kelpies will be functional as well as aesthetic, operating the first lock on the east end of the Forth-Clyde canal near Falkirk. The heads will slowly rock forward and back to push water into the lock and raise boats into the canal."

I wish this stunning piece a long life as the lines from Shelley's Ozymandias run through my mind. Recite it with me now, breathing from the diaphram:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

For some perverse reason, this is one of my favorite poems. It reminds me of everything from decaying grain elevators, to precariously leaning barns, to the stacks of "junk" we have piled all around our house. This too, shall pass. In the meantime, let's embrace the cycle of birth, life, and decay. People love the giant tree in Stanley Park, simply because of its size. It is breaking down now, and doing what trees are meant to do, becoming part of the cycle of death and recreation. Time for it to become a site where a cedar seed to gives birth to a new tree.

Another thing that came up as an idea from one of the architects that was maybe sculptures are like crops---they need to be rotated. By George, that's a great idea! It's a good idea to recognize the organic quality of a piece of art with respects to its relationship to the environment and the viewer. Either that, or like the beautiful carvings and totem poles in the First Nations House of Learning at UBC the art is integrated in a harmonious way into the structure of the site itself. That's the challenge that we're faced with in a beautiful setting like UBC Farm.

Material Friendships

A workshop with artist Elizabeth Sheffrin at the Roundhouse got me inspired to make some prayer flags for the bees to sell at the East Side Cultural Crawl. So I have been wrestling with silk, sewing machine, and fusible interfacing. I had some good sewing karma and some bad sewing karma. The sewing machine behaved. The fabric did not.

It's very cathartic to go into my treasure chests of scraps to reuse, repurpose, and recycle, but in the end it is very hard on one's body. In short, I managed to get two sets of flags done so far and I have come down with a cold. My body's begging for a rest, but my mind is still buzzing on that peppermint mocha latte I had to give myself some pep.

Petals, fabric, seeds, and words, these are the things that bind my friendships together. This year has been rich in art and friendship and I'm very pleased with that.

There are a lot of Minervas in my life, and they inspire me. Wise women who work to change the world, one small project at a time.

Together we love the shared process of making art and hey, when there's a nice product that comes out of it, that's the gravy on the cake. But we all know that product may just need to be transformed and recycled too some day. It's a very humbling process. For more info on the East Side Cultural Crawl, check out Lois Klassen's blog.

Where Should We Go?

Okay, so I got Tolkien's quote a bit mixed up. It's supposed to read, "Not all those who wander are lost," but I like my version too--"Those who wander are never lost." Well, you're not lost if you don't have a destination in mind, right? Wandering is what these folks are going to do for the next year and a half. They've got a plan not to have a plan. Yep, they're heading south, to Disneyland and beyond.


Kermit the frog was on hand to report from the scene.

This is how I will always think of them--they love babies...and they love making babies, obviously as they've got three.

This is somebody else's baby, but still cuddly, nonetheless.


That about says it all.


They put maps on the wall so friends could mark places that they recommended as destinations. We left notes that they could take with them and put in their scrapbooks once they make a new home. Home away from home. There's been a lot of talk about detachment lately, and how not getting too involved is a good thing. Bahh, that's a load of rot. We are attached. They're leaving behind their possessions, but we're coming with them, in a sense. They'll have a blog. We'll send them e-mails. They'll come back and visit.

My son gave their oldest daughter, who is his age, a big good-bye hug. It's hardest when your child's friend leaves because this is one of their first experiences of loss. You want to keep them from the pain, but you know you can't.

Snippers

Lucky me. I got to attend a sweater-altering workshop with Sharon Kallis. She showed us how to work with real wool sweaters that have shrunk and/or been damaged. Sharon calls these sweaters "snippers."

Lucky Us. It was somebody's birthday and we got to eat cake.


I tried to work with this rainbow scarf, and ended up using it as a layer underneath some cut work.


Sharon is a pro at this. Look at her cute little shrug.


Here we are, the nutty sweater ladies! This week and next Sharon is giving the same workshop and it is free. Contact the Coal Harbor Community Centre for details.

Radio Silence

These photos were taken November 10th as I walked to picked Ullie up from school. That morning, I had attended the Remembrance Day assembly, which was very moving. The principal explained the basic Canadian Remembrance day traditions--singing the anthem while facing the flag, two minutes of silence to remember the dead, the reading of "On Flander's Fields", and the playing of "Taps" on the bugle. Every child and teacher in the school wore a poppy, some of them hand-made.

So when I asked Ullie to stop for the two minutes of silence on Nov. 11, he knew just what to do and why. He was having a playdate with a friend and ironically, they were playing a game called World of Warcraft. I stopped too. I stood downstairs and listened to the radio silence on CBC 1. I was struck at how CBC radio unites us as a country. Even though it was a rebroadcast because of the differences in the time zones, I felt connected to the other provinces where similar ceremonies were happening in towns and cities all accross Canada. In that silence, I thought of the sheer number of war victims around the world and the people in Afghanistan who are suffering right now.

Simple traditions. Even the kindergarten class learns about "what the poppies say." It's good to learn about what silence says as well.

A Seedy Tea Party

This Sunday Sharon Kallis, artist in residence at the Coal Harbor Community Centre held a women's intergenerational tea party. It was incredibly beautiful and inspiring. We ate scones and cookies and created an ephemeral table cloth out of seeds, leaves, and petals from the neighborhood. Check out Sharon's photos here.