May Art in Vancouver

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If it’s May, it must be Grad Show at Emily Carr time. We always enjoy seeing what the new crop of artists are up to; the photos below were taken in the school’s library. This structure, not unlike an outhouse in design, invites people to interact with it.

Ty obliged by adding some geometric patterns to the interior walls.

We really enjoyed seeing the variety of sketchbooks on display, especially those with lots of colour and pop-up shapes. They reminded me of my teen paper bag creations; I used to carry around my books in a paper grocery bag that I’d decorated with organic and geometrical patterns and figures in a variety of coloured pens. These, though, are more sophisticated than my student efforts.

I was also pleased to note the resurgence of interest in material print media (as opposed to digital images); this example is a screen print/woodblock combination illustrating what I assume is the artist’s own story.

Usually, I respond less to the design sections of the show, but this year the installation was better, more coherent somehow, and there were several pieces that I examined closely. It’s interesting that most of the student designers are working on very socially conscious projects – here’s one example.

In the Fine Arts section, there were quite a few examples of what we used to call “tight” drawing – highly detailed and illustrative. This may be a function of the renewed interest in illustration at Emily Carr.

As usual, there were lots of examples of photography, some of it in the Vancouver School vein and others more like Nan Goldin-like.

Most of the print works were abstract, several with cutout elements. I’m assuming that the latter are influenced by artists such as Swoon, with her large scale print installations of woodcuts.

We were a bit surprised to note that not much “traditional” sculpture was on display, although there were lots of three dimensional pieces and small installations.

I liked this piece quite a bit, bronze objects placed atop charred plinths.

The piece above was one of the more striking works, cut out plywood panels, I think, with dramatic lighting that cycled on and off.

I also took a look at the Roundhouse Exhibition in honour of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Langley Fine Arts School.

This show included quite a bit of illustration and also some nice mixed media wall pieces.

Another very interesting exhibition is Bioanimology at the ArtStarts Gallery on Richards, a space featuring the art produced by public school children working with artists in residence.

The projects are thematic and participants produce works that are both beautiful and socially-conscious. Grade three and five students from Enderby worked with two professional artists, Cathy Stubington and Julie Ross, to learn about local birds through puppetry, movement, song, and dramatic play.

The bird puppets are really quite delightful.

Kitsilano high school students worked with Phyllis Schwartz to produce photograms, lumen prints featuring organic materials – really beautiful.

Zev Tiefenbach worked with Salmon Art school children to produce photographic images of the weather in their world. Each child was given a digital camera for a week to record the natural environment and the feeling of being alive in that particular place.

For five weeks first nations artist Anastasia Hendry guided Langley students through a coastal first-nations-inspired series of drawings of animals on deer hide. These are beautifully mounted on circular halos of wood, together casting evocative shadows on the wall behind.

The rat man and I checked out the latest wall art in the alley behind the Dominion Building, an ever-changing cornucopia of colour.

As you can tell, Brubin is also an art lover.

On our tour through the downtown eastside I enjoyed seeing Elizabeth Zvonar’s work at the Audain Gallery in the Woodward’s Building.

While I was inside perusing the art, Ty and Brubin got caught in a rogue downpour outside …

A great discovery at 33 W Hastings was the new Lost + Found cafe, a cavernous food-art-travel emporium of global handcrafts and local art and food.

221A Centre at 221A East Pender has an exhibition of photo works by some of this year’s Emily Carr graduates.

By this time the boys were getting a little weary, so we turned our faces homeward.

Closer to home artist Yuri Padal is working on and displaying his oil paintings in the small plaza next to the Yaletown skytrain station.

See more photos here.

 

Lynn Canyon Park – west coast rain forest

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In those long ago days back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs walked the earth and screeching winged beasts flew hither and yon overhead, I used to walk down to Lynn Canyon Park from the ol’ homestead in North Vancouver.

That’s because, back in that fine day,  no one felt it necessary to drive one’s offspring everywhere … it was either walk or fly … and not having yet been granted my wings, it was walking for me. The walk was relatively pleasant, not least because in those far away days, not that many vehicles plied the dusty roadways. I always took advantage of the opportunity to gather cast-away pop bottles from the ditches, since my 35 cent allowance did not go very far (and my sweet tooth was even then highly developed). The old wooden high-ceilinged grocery store that formerly graced the corner of Lynn Valley and Mountain Highway had a vast array of penny candy placed in glass jars temptingly arranged on the counter near the door; when not spending my money on 55 cent packages of cigarettes (Rothmans as I remember … so long ago), I spent it on vast quantities of cheap sugar treats.

Back in the day, the Lynn Canyon Park was simply a park, not an Ecology Centre. It had no concession stands, no ranger stations, no washrooms … nada, nichts, nothing except trees, plants, cliffs, and water. And a suspension bridge. I loved the suspension bridge; higher than the one you have to pay for in Capilano Canyon (although not as long), it swings mightily back and forth to the dancing feet of folks racing across it. The first time I went with my mother to the suspension bridge was when I realised that she was deathly afraid of heights. She backed up and away from it so fast I barely had time to blink.

These days things have been upscaled a bit; there’s a concession stand that even sells beer (much to Ty’s delight). But the main reason for going there, the forest and the trees, is essentially the same as it was when I was young (Oh sweet bird of youth, where have ye flown?). On a recent dull day Ty, Christine, Brubin, and I fired up the Modo car and headed north to the canyon. Once across the suspension bridge, we walked along wide paths, some with long, steep wooden staircases, down past Twin Falls to Lynn Creek and back up again to the Lower Seymour Conservation Forest.

I used to like to wade up to my hips in the creek in my jeans, enjoying the glacial cold water on a blistering hot day. Over the many years since I last visited Lynn Canyon and now, twenty people have died in this park, some of whom are memorialised with bronze plaques such as the one above. Every year people take their lives in their hands, by going out of bounds, cliff-jumping, sunbathing in unfortunate locations and the like. Visit on a quiet day and you will be transported back to a time when the temperate west coast rain forest covered this entire region.

See more photos here. More information available here.

Summer in May

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It’s summer in May – global climate change, anyone? Seemingly overnight, the temperature here on the rain coast has gone from 9 degrees to 25, and the cloudless skies continue … We decided to hop on the aquabus and head over to Habitat Island for an afternoon exploration of the area around the Olympic Village.

Approaching the area along the south seawall, you can see the highrises of Main Street and Telus Science World in the distance. Habitat Island is the small peninsula directly in front of them.

The bushes and undergrowth along the shoreline here are home to more than one resident; along with a colony of crows whose rookery occupies the higher trees, folks sleep rough here.

The rotting remains of a public art project are still here; this was once a card- and particle-board replica of a caterpillar digger.

From the City of Vancouver website, here is a blurb about this area: “Habitat Island is an urban sanctuary along Southeast False Creek. Deep layers of soil have been added to the area to provide nourishment for new trees to grow. Boulders and logs commonly found along the coastlines in this region of British Columbia provide a home for plants, small animals, insects, crabs, starfish, barnacles and other creatures. Surrounded by water at high tide, the island is also a sanctuary for birds.

More than 200 native trees, as well as shrubs, flowers, and grasses that grow naturally in this region have been planted along the waterfront path and on the island. The island was created as part of the development at Southeast False Creek, site of the 2010 Winter Games Athletes Village. To build Habitat Island, shoreline and inlet, about 60,000 cubic metres of rock, cobble, gravel, sand and boulders were used. The ebb and flow of the tide on the rocky shoreline creates an ideal home for starfish, crabs, fish, shellfish and other creatures.”

The tall leave-less trees jutting up in front of the mountains provide resting places for birds, including bald eagles.

Habitat Island is interconnected with the adjoining wetlands which take in water from the storm drains in the area and rehabilitate it before it enters False Creek. This shoreline restoration has resulted in herring returning to spawn in False Creek; often you can see great blue herons fishing, too. Originally, this peninsula was to be an actual island but the powers that be were afraid that people would be stranded on it at high tide; the small causeway connecting the island with the seawall was raised to prevent that possibility.

These wetlands were also recently home to a young urban beaver; although we hoped to get a glimpse of it, the beast was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’s moved on to a larger watering hole.

Along with the mysterious beaver, another wild life visitor has captured the hearts of Vancouverites, the juvenile elephant seal currently molting on Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver. Barb and I rode our bikes over to take a look.

As you can see from this photo, the moss on the trees along the stream at Ambleside is incredible, a testament to this area’s status as temperate rain forest, not that you would know it from our current weather.

From the beach we watched as a Turkish freighter came into the port.

The elephant seal occupies a fenced off area on the west end of the beach. Looking decidedly unhappy, this day he was lying mute and stationary near the water, seemingly indifferent to all the curious spectators.

While over there, I took the opportunity to gather some drift wood for an art installation I’m preparing.

Farther down the waterfront a woman was feeding the seabirds and crows near John Lawson Park.

There are quite a few arts spaces along this stretch of water; we stopped in at the Silk Purse Gallery, formerly the home of an eccentric local who donated it to the West Van Arts Council some years ago.

See more photos here.

Rolling …

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Barb and I tried out the semi-new cycling path along the North Shore recently; called the Spirit Trail, it runs from the Auto Mall at the foot of Pemberton out to West Vancouver to connect with the seaside bike and walking route. After coming across the harbour via seabus, we rode past the Mosquito Creek marina, through the Burrard First Nations Reserve, and down onto the Spirit Trail path.

Rolling along the waterfront we saw the paddle wheeler cruising the harbour and enjoyed seeing the variety of four legged beasts out and about on the sunny day.

About halfway along the path a new bridge has been erected over the train tracks. Once up and over the bridge, we cruised through Norgate and the reserve lands next to Lion’s Gate Bridge, admiring the stenciled salmon image adorning a wooden fence.

Traveling under the bridge, our route took us past Park Royal Shopping Centre and through Ambleside Park.

We stopped briefly at the Ferry Building Art Gallery to admire a show of first nations art that had just been installed.

The trail took us as far as the West Van seawall; there we turned around rather than continue on to Dundarave along the road. Bikes are not allowed on the seawall here, as passersby never hesitate to tell us when we are standing nearby with our bikes.

We have had an amazing spring for flowers, especially tulips.

Friday night skates are back on the menu; Winson very kindly purchased a portable speaker for us to use – it’s more fun to skate with tunes.

Our route takes us from Science World, through Chinatown and Strathcona, with its beautiful old buildings, to the ice cream palace on Venables, the Casa de Gelato with its 250 flavours.

From there, we head down to the docks.

From the top of the Main Street viaduct, we had a beautiful view of the sun starting to set behind Canada Place.

The gigantic cranes and shipyard buildings glowed brilliant orange in the setting sun.

As we rolled through Stanley Park, darkness was descending over Coal Harbour.

This place is so beautiful in good weather; it has gone from very cold to summer overnight. The photos below are from another recent roll around the seawall; as you can see, the beaches are packed and every imaginable wheeled and four footed conveyance is pressed into service.

See more pictures here.

 

Vancouver Spring this and that II

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Springtime in Vancouver – incredible beautiful flowers and cloudless skies (at least this day). I love this garden bed at George Wainborn Park – it’s always colourful and always full of a variety of blooms.

Yesterday, while walking Brubin along the seawall, we saw this big heron fishing. It is really great to see these birds back in the area, a testament to the cleanliness of these waters now.

Over the winter I have been ice-skating at Kits with the “older adults” … and Maureen organised a birthday party for those in the group turning 75 and older this year, an event attended by about 40 people at the arena. Here are some photos of those fit folks.

Most of these people are in their 80s and had never skated as children; the woman in the red helmet took up speed skating at 74. The fellow second from the right took up skating 7 years ago. However, some, like Rusty (second from left), have skated their entire lives.

I have also been visiting the Beaty Museum to take photographs of their Tetrapod Collection, of which this sealion skeleton is a part. Here it looks as though its about to bite Lori Latremouille’s surrealist pastel work.

One of this Spring’s brilliant brainwaves was to get electric assist bikes and a trailer for Brubin. We’ve tested the trailer out a couple of times on the seawall; he much prefers it to the previous wire basket he was required to ride in.

I have also been volunteering with the West End Seniors Network at Barclay Manor, where I am the art studio facilitator one day a week. This group of active people come together to paint once or twice a week; several of them also show their work in various venues.

Of course, skating and cycling are wonderful on a day like this!

I saw a nice show of artists’ posters at the Burnaby Art Gallery, including these by Jack Shadbolt from the 70s.

And these by one of my old printmaking instructors, Ron Eckert.

A few images from Elizabeth MacKenzie’s exhibition were still in evidence on the walls.

The photo below shows Brubin and Aran at rest.

See more pictures here.

 

Vancouver Spring This and That

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You can just see Ty in the shadows of these amazing flowering cherry trees in our neighbourhood – two blocks of incredible pink profusion.

Since my sister Tracey moved to Saskatoon, there has not been as much reason for us to visit the North Shore but this day, the North Shore Art Crawl called to us; we took the Seabus over to visit the Lower Lonsdale studios.

The fifteen minute crossing gave us a close up view of some of the many huge freighters in the harbour, their red shapes contrasting with the surrounding blue of the mountains and ocean.

Here you can see one of the floating drydocks of Seaspan Shipyards.

The Lonsdale Quay is nice but has never really taken off as a place to be; it’s a bit of a pale shadow of the more popular Granville Island. Too bad because on a good weather day, it’s beautiful.

A row of restaurants still line the bottom of Lonsdale and we sampled the breakfast goodies at one, Raglan’s; unfortunately, for my dining pleasure, so did a group of loud and hungover patrons, whose uninteresting conversation impinged too greatly on my consciousness …

Across the way are the newly-refurbished buildings of the old Burrard Dry Dock. These, formerly the home of a bustling ship-building enterprise, are now empty and waiting for municipal government money to be brought back to life. Beginning back in the 50s and 60s my uncle and several of my parents’ friends worked their whole lives in these shipyards.

Some of those folks may be included in this enlargement of an old photo of the workers.

Below are some pictures of the shipyards that I took several years ago, after they had been closed down and before the resurrection.

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The pier is beautiful; strangely, though, there is no life saving equipment in evidence here.

New condos have been erected here, yet, on this beautiful day, hardly anyone was in evidence. Are these places vacant, we wondered, like the ghost towers of Coal Harbour?

The rear end of a Victory class ship is still standing here, all wrapped up in a white plastic bag … who knows why.

We visited the 106 West First Street building where several artists’ studios are located. On the hallway wall are a couple of frescoes; this one shows the Lynn Valley trolley car, part of ancient history around here.

The Holland/Croft studio was the largest and most impressive. These folks have a teaching classroom set up in their space, complete with some interesting props.

Further up Lonsdale Avenue, we stopped in at CityScape’s Nude Figure show.

Strangely, for all the talk of Lower Lonsdale being revived by new housing developments, the place seemed quieter than it was ten years ago when Tracey lived here. Opus has moved, the Petrov Gallery has moved and several storefronts were vacant … not sure what’s going on over there.

See more photos here.

 

 

Heartfelt 2013 at the Vancouver Print Room

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Torrie Groening, a Vancouver artist who’d been living in San Francisco for quite a while, has relocated back to Vancouver and set up a new studio and gallery in Strathcona, the Vancouver Print Room, in an old converted church at 832 Jackson Street. It’s a fabulous space and a great venue for her first curated exhibition Heartfelt 2013, a reprise and extension of a 1997 exhibition of print works on the theme of love.

Opening night saw lots of Vancouver’s artists and friends gathered to view the salon-style exhibition. Since it was a coolish evening, I thought the blue biking gloves were a necessary touch, even though they made my hands look like gigantic cartoon-character mitts.

As you can see from the photo below, the studio area is large, with lots of room for Torrie’s props and equipment.

For more information on the Heartfelt show, click here. To read an essay by Doris Shadbolt on the original 1997 printmaking project, click here. See more pictures here.

 

 

Invoking Venus, Feathers and Fashion

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Marsha, Ty, and Dana at the opening of Invoking Venus, Feathers and Fashion.

INVOKING VENUS, Feathers and Fashion features photo-based images by Catherine Stewart and accessories from the clothing collections of Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers.

Using bird specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Vancouver-based Stewart explores the role colour, patterning and adornment play in courtship and attraction. Through the juxtaposition of images of bird plumage with images of vintage fabrics and actual feathered fashion accessories, the parallels in human and bird behaviour become apparent. The lush and sensuous images magnify details in avian plumage and vintage fabrics, revealing a multitude of rich and varied hues that combine to create the colours, textures and patterns observed when viewing birds and humans at their finest.

“On the surface, birds and humans are very different. Yet, if you really observe these two groups you can start to draw many parallels in their behaviour,” explains Yukiko Stranger-Jones, Exhibits Manager, Beaty Biodiversity Museum. “Through pairs of images, Stewart engages us in a visual dialogue that examines the role adornment plays in the courtship of both birds and humans.” (text from the Beaty website)

The opening reception included a fashion show featuring historical clothing and accessories from the collections of Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke. The show was hosted by Ivan Sayers and explored the history of feathers in fashion. Clothing from about the 1880s to the 1970s was worn by a series of models who strutted their stuff on the red carpet running beneath the gigantic whale’s skeleton in the Museum’s atrium.

Seated right below the whale’s huge jaw bones, we contemplated the possibility of being crushed if the “big one”, the huge megathrust earthquake overdue in these parts, were unhappily to occur this evening.

In his comments Sayers pointed out the action and reaction of clothing designers whose dresses became longer or shorter, tighter or looser, bigger or smaller depending upon the changing political and social status of women through time. (It was difficult to get a photograph that was in focus – the models did not stand still for very long).

Similarly the hats alternated between gigantic feathered confections and small, close-to-the-head caps and bows.

One of the most bizarre hats included the head and feathers of a small animal on its front face. A break in the proceedings allowed the audience a chance to view Catherine’s photos works hung along a corridor framing the Beaty collection.

I rather like the Francis-Bacon-like effect in the picture below. See more pictures here. More information about the show is here.

Mountain Snowshoe Madness

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Foggy day in the city – the forest of cranes continues to grow in downtown Vancouver … condo-mania  – who`s buying all these spaces?

We are so lucky to have such beautiful mountains right on our doorstep – the view below is from the lookout point halfway up Cypress Mountain on a recent foggy day. You can just see the tops of the highest glass towers downtown peeking through the ocean of cloud covering the city, with Mount Baker’s volcanic cone in the background.

Here’s the gang of three in front of the upper warming hut on Cypress, resting before a push for the upper snow shoe trails.

We paused to take in the view from the High View Lookout – unfortunately, we couldn’t see as much as this picture shows.

We saw one dead tree with several enormous fungi attached to it – I remember collecting these babies when I was a kid.

The upper x-country ski trails were not as crowded this day, although several groups from Hollyburn Ski Club were racing around the circuit.

The whiskey jack birds were out in force, zooming over to us from their perch in the surrounding trees when Christine pulled out her bag of crushed crackers.

Following the Far East Trail down the hill, we stopped to admire the “Old Man of the Mountain”, a gigantic old growth tree, one of the few remaining on the mountain. This one is thought to be over a thousand years old.

It’s hard to get a sense of how huge this tree is from the photos …

The old Hollyburn Mountain Lodge is still going strong, pumping out fries and hot chocolate for the skiing hordes. From the base of the Nordic area, you can see one of the downhill runs across the valley.

Sometimes I’m a bit sorry that my knees are no longer up to downhill skiing.

We were above the fog bank up on the mountain; it was a beautiful sunny day on the hill while the city was still  enveloped in cloud.

See more photos here.

Sweet Pea Swing Band at the Prophouse

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We were at the Prophouse in Vancouver the other night to hear Sweet Pea Swing Band. The Prophouse is a great venue, a coffee house that also serves beer and wine, has great local music and a vast and eclectic collection of collectabilia, including a copy of Rembrandt’s painting Man with a Golden Helmet, the very same one I grew up with over the mantle in the family home, many reproductions of leopards, plastic rotary dial phones, and the like.

The band was great – highly recommeded!