Graffiti doesn’t last long around these parts – here’s some earlier, now vanished, commentary:

I was happy to see that “Beauty in Things” was back in the alley between Railspur and the Keg … this little bit of graffiti had been whitewashed earlier but the intrepid artist must have returned.

I would have thought that the acres of concrete on the Burrard Bridge buttresses would be prime real estate for graffiti art, but this statement was the only one there.

Ty thought that two pairs of abandoned shoes would work well with the Barbie heads …

On the outside wall of the Molson Beer factory at the foot of Burrard Bridge we observed this trenchant comment:

See more pictures here and here.

Here’s the story from today’s Province:

The PNE is about the last place you would expect to find some thought provoking art. But it is there, interestingly packed into a couple-dozen cargo containers inside the PNE’s Celebration Plaza. The hugely popular “container art” exhibit is the brainchild of the PNE’s Peter Male.What started out  at last summer’s PNE as a small eight-artist exhibit, has become wildly successful and serious artists are now finding it a great way to show their unique work to the masses.

Some of those involved in the art exhibit have ties to Vancouver’s Eastside Cultural Crawl, an annual three-day event in the fall where artists of all stripes open their studios to the public.“It took off,” is how Male describes bringing in the wide-ranging art to last summer’s PNE. The introduction of the “installation” type of art set inside unused shipping containers, also won the PNE an industry award for the most innovative new concept in the business in 2009. One of the exhibits was sent to Milan, Italy for another showing last fall at a major event. This year 15 artists have contributed to the installation art show, with two being students from the prestigious Emily Carr University of Art & Design.

East Vancouver-based artist Ken Gerberick, who works in an artists’ collective known as “Hungry Thumb”, spent three long days hand-bending rebar with collaborator Harvey Chometsky for a giant egg-like figure embedded in driftwood for their exhibit entitled “The Birth of Un-Civilization.”

In the back of the container, a video collage continuously runs, and at the front of the clear Ikea shelf -paper-wrapped egg, when kids look inside a camera, it shows their face on another screen. A beautiful copper-on-canvas man-like figure hangs in the middle and another man made out of old car emblems hangs down on the other side. “I’m totally stoked having my stuff at the PNE,” says Gerberick, who besides being a passionate artist also fronts a local punk rock band. ”Look at how many people are looking at it,” he beams, while visiting the fair. “You want people to see it. It is supposed to make you think. You don’t expect it to sell.”

Gerberick is not one to mince words about his art and the process behind the creation “Basically I’m not into art talk at all,” he quips. “For me what you see is what you get. “I was just trying to make a beautiful, glowing egg. It’s working with your space. That’s installation art.” With good weather, PNE officials are hoping to bring in more than one million visitors. Even If only 10 per cent of the visitors take in the container art, Gerberick says it is still a lot more exposure than he could ever get in a gallery. “I’ve never been in an art gallery where 100,000 people see my work,” he says.

Vancouver artist Rachael Ashe has a show inside a container called ”Forgotten Knowledge.” She sees the PNE stepping up to deliver some serious artwork to the public. “It is a really fantastic idea,” she says of the show. “There are very few opportunities out there like this for an artist.” In her show, with a theme of human knowledge that has been lost or forgotten, Ashe has encyclopedias with holes hanging from the walls. She loves seeing the crowds. “This exposes people to a different style of art,” she says.

Besides the container art, the show has a meticulously built model of the PNE’s wooden roller coaster. Ronald Anderson of Portland Oregon, spent almost three years building the model after riding the iconic roller coaster dozens of times. Artist Gerberick also has one of his “art cars” on display at the show. The 1976 Buick has tail fins from a 1962 Cadillac and is completely covered with various types of art. He likes visiting the PNE and seeing the joy people get from his “art car.” “That is the idea, to put a smile on their face,” he says. “A number of people have said to me that car has made their day.

See more PNE pictures here.

“This Would Be Nothing Without You” was selected as one of the winners of the 2010 Digital Art.LA International Exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.

The selected winners will be exhibited as the central focus of the “DigitalArt.LA” expo in a large group exhibit at the LACDA gallery (selected net.art entries will be exhibited on the artists’ websites). The show will be widely promoted and will include a reception for the artists in Los Angeles on Thursday Sept 9 (which I will attend). The expo screenings, exhibits and events are throughout the day and evening on September 9, 2010 (concurrent with and promoted by the Downtown Art Walk and the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles). The winners exhibit will remain in the gallery September 9-October 2, 2010.

The 2010 DigitalArt.LA International Juried Exhibit is curated by Peter Frank, Critic, Curator; Riverside Art Museum, California. The selected work is from the series entitled “Hanging by a Slender Thread”.

In addition, two other works from this series, “Landscape with Cowboys” and “Satyr v1″, have been selected for the international juried exhibition of electronic art organised by the Hungarian Electrographic Art Association. This exhibition, Matrices 2010, will be shown at the Danube Gallery, KAS Gallery, Hungarian Workshop Gallery, D-Court Gallery, and FISE Gallery in Budapest, Hungary from August until October 2010.

Los Angeles Center For Digital Art
107 West Fifth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
http://www.lacda.com
http://DigitalArt.LA

See more information and work from this series here.

See more information about the exhibition here.

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the road again to cycle the Myra Canyon, just south of Kelowna. Ty, Brubin  and I hit the road Friday; after picking up Ty from work, we headed north and east to Kelowna, driving through a white out and snow storm on the Hwy 97 connector just outside of Merritt. Most of the vehicles had pulled off the road because it was almost impossible to see but the intrepid Red Rocket with Ty at the wheel managed to motor through it. Just as we hit Kelowna, a text message came in from our compatriot Curly-Q saying that they couldn’t take the weather and were turning back. As I was just about to ask the folks at the front desk of the Okanagan Seasons Resort, our shack away from home, for a smaller room, who should pull up but the PT Cruiser with Barb, Christine and Doug – they’d been just joshin’ us.

We had a one bedroom suite at the Okanagan Seasons; advertised as five acres of family fun, the resort has seen better days. It has quite a bit in the way of amenities, an outdoor pool, indoor pool, hot tub, sauna, and small breakfast room, but everything’s looking pretty tired. Probably in the sixties when the place was built it had been in the countryside but Kelowna has expanded so much that it’s basically just beside a long line of strip malls. Our room was fine for our purposes, although the old fridge’s pump kept coming on with a bang throughout the night, sounding like a jet engine taking off; that, along with the rattling old air conditioner and the dulcet tunes of Ty’s snoring and Brubin’s dreamtime squeeks, made sleeping a bit difficult for me on the first night.

Friday night after the drive up we had a late dinner at one of the many strip mall restaurants, Joey Kelowna, sampling some local grape and bellinis. Saturday morning we were up and ready to roll after a BBQ’d grease fest of bacon and eggs and off south to the Myra Canyon trailhead at the end of McCullough Road. After Friday night’s snowstorm we were a bit concerned about what the weather might be like but the day dawned sunny with fluffy white clouds and a coolish temperature, pretty good conditions for the 24 km cycle. We unloaded the bikes and got geared up for the ride; Brubin was settled into his basket on Ty’s bike and off we went. The Canyon is quite spectacular still even with the evidence of the devastating 2003 fire everywhere present.

Burnt trees were everywhere, with tiny new trees growing up around them. The black and grey twisted trees made fabulous shapes against the blue sky as we rode past.

The canyon has 18 trestles and 2 tunnels and the trail runs basically along the top edge of the canyon, making it quite an easy ride. We compared it favourably with cycling the Trail of the Hiawatha out of Taft Montana, another old railway line converted into a cycling trail which we’d done in 2004 and 2005. That trail is slightly longer, with more tunnels and goes much further downhill than the Myra Canyon trail.

We enjoyed cruising along, stopping fairly frequently for photographs and gasping at the fabulous views. As we paused for a snack at the end of one of the trestles, Brubin was let off his leash and tried to go streaking off down an embankment after the chipmunks who appeared begging for food. It could have been nasty, given that the ground was covered with loose gravel and the drop to the canyon floor was steep and looonnnnng. Luckily, we managed to call him back before he disappeared over the edge.

The chipmunks here are very cheeky and fearless, zipping around from rock to rock in search of any little nibble to be found. After stopping for our lunch of Subway sandwiches purchased at the local strip mall and trying to tempt the many chipmunks into coming closer, we headed back up the trail again, this time more quickly since the air was brisk and a bit chilly. Ty had some energy to burn at the end, so he took off like a bat out of hell, careening along the trail back to the cars; Doug and I raced back panting while Barb and Christine took their time.

After dropping Ty back off at the ranch, the four of us headed off again for a little wine tour, heading back the way we’d come to East Kelowna to sample the goodies at the Raven Cidery, a small establishment with a chicken pen and a goat house, the Avalon Winery, and the House of Rose Winery. The cider tasted like port and was very expensive so we passed on it but each of us made purchases at the two wineries. I picked up a nice bottle of Pinot Gris at Avalon, while Barb and Christine each nabbed a couple of bottles of Gewurtztraminer and Merlot. To complete the evening we BBQ’d some steaks on the courtyard of the OK Seasons and sampled the hot tub and Sauna. A gaggle of young women from Vancouver were staying at the resort for a stagette and came giggling into the pool room carrying two gigantic pink balloon cocks and a male blow-up doll just as we were leaving – lots of fun had by all!

The next day Barb, Doug, Christine and I tried out the downtown Kelowna Art Walk, a several block long cruise through the city and along the lakefront, and enjoyed the several sculptures found there. My favourites were the two silver metal pieces next to the Kelowna Library, one a nautilus-shell-shaped arrangement with engraved and relief sculptures of animal species and the other a standing infinity-shaped ribbon in which letters, numbers, and symbols were incised.

The Grand Hotel and Casino complex on the lakefront is the most upscale part of Kelowna; here, a speedboat erected on a plinth is displayed as a sculpture just outside the front door; inside bronze dolphins frolic. In the lagoon encircling the complex are many high speed, high cost boats parked next to the condos; I mused that the people I’d met in the village of Ibrahimpasa, Turkey, would be absolutely amazed at this display of luxury and wealth which for some here is merely commonplace … The preserved marsh area just north of the beach includes a few trees for nesting eagles and other large birds and a wooden boardwalk from which to admire the ducks. Nature has been made into a small museum here; as Doug noted, it’s a bit sad.

We also visited Roger, a friend of Doug’s who’s the winemaker for Grey Monk and also has his own small home winery in Oyama/Winfield, just north of Kelowna. His place has a beautiful view of Kalamalka Lake, a rich deep greenish-blue on that day. Roger gave us the lowdown on his operation (an enormous amount of work, particularly considering that he and his wife both have day jobs and two young children) and let us sample several of his creations. Each of us left with quite a few bottles – the Intrique Gewurtztraminer, especially, was a hit with us.

Read more about the Myra Canyon here. See more pictures of the canyon trip here. See pictures of the Kelowna Art Walk and lakefront here.

I love plush toy animals, especially brightly coloured round ones. They make me smile. I had been thinking about the degradation of the environment, climate change, and the stress this puts on animal species, and wanted to make a small comment on this, to me, distressing facet of climate change and economic imperatives. I collected quite a few plush toys from various thrift stores, selecting ones with whimsical expressions and glorious colours, and hung them up in trees around my local environment. It amused me to note, as I hung them up, the reactions of passers-by. A few people were actively interested and took pictures; others were interested but did not want to appear so; still others walked by without noticing. Children, almost without exception, loved to see these toys hanging in space.

It wasn’t easy to find suitable trees; they had to be near the ocean, in a place where there were other “species” with which they could interact, humans, birds, etc., the backdrop had to be visually engaging, and the tree had to have branches low enough to the ground so that I, not a tall person, could work with them.

Lumbermen’s Arch in Stanley Park fit the bill – here are a few pictures from that installation.

I also tried hanging them in trees surrounding Lost Lagoon.

Ty and I found a suitable cherry tree at Sunset Beach.

I thought I’d position them, with the anatomical head and head of Athena, along a log in the open field at the entrance to Stanley Park with the beautiful blue pond in the background.

I have always liked this sculpture, “The Meeting”, part of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, and installed across from Cardero’s Restaurant at Coal Harbour. I amused myself by placing a different animal on each of the figure’s heads, and the two heads in two of the men’s hands. People love interacting with this work.

I couldn’t resist the posture of this character from Yue Minjun’s Amazing Laughter, part of the Sculpture Biennale and located at English Bay. I just had to hang my little animals from his fingers, as if he were a big puppet master laughing about the absurdity of these little toys.

I love the worried expression of the little teddy bear as he appears to be hoisted into the air.

See more here, here and here.

Here is the invitation for Matrices 2010, shows including my work currently being exhibited in galleries around Budapest.

See more here.

When I’m not riding my bike around and playing with toys, I’m recording the texts of the downtown urban landscape. This poster occupies the wall of a building slated for demolition just around the corner from my place.

This pithy comment has been spray-painted onto the wall of an upscale men’s clothing store (with the pretentious name of Enve) across the street.

Along the concrete wall of the Seymour Street bridge off-ramp a number of murals have been painted by graffiti artists included in the City of Vancouver’s now-defunct Restart (Rehabilitation through Art) Graffiti Management Program. Read more about this program here.

What interests me about these murals, aside from their brilliant colours and, in some cases, caustic social commentary, are the plants that have made a home alongside them, pushing their way through cracks in the sidewalk concrete.

The artist who painted this one got it right – the future is our responsibility. And there’s no spaceship yet that can extricate us from the mess we’re creating … unless the late, great Scotty from Star Trek can hear this cry from whereever in space he’s got himself off to.

The landscape of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is changing; the mural below wasn’t there the last time I was in the area not too long ago. Perhaps it has appeared as a commentary on the gentrification of the area and the influx of urbanites with the condo towers and shops to accommodate them.

What goes up eventually must come down – the issue is when and by what means.

Is everything going to be alright? …

Above is an example of one of the new condo developments; below is an advertisement for another, the Paris Annex. The graffiti tag “I Love You” inscribed here is one that I’ve seen all over the downtown eastside and Hastings Street, usually in this particular font.

There are very few business left open on this particular block of Hastings Street, formerly (well, in the 50s and 60s, anyway) one of Vancouver’s liveliest. Save On Meats was one of the last to close its doors; the cry “Save Our City”, uttered by an anonymous inhabitant, riffs on the earlier butcher’s sign.

Although I’m not sure, I suspect the city referred to here is the one occupied by the long-time residents of the Downtown Eastside who are being pushed out by the redevelopment of the area.

See more here.

It’s funny how sometimes every picture of an urban landscape looks like a Jeff Wall … well, with the exception, in this case, of the inclusion of the large smiling man at the table eating pizza. Had he simply been staring down at the table top with an inscrutable look … voila – JW.

It’s hard to believe that in this day of non-stop, universal cyber-porn, people still frequent these sleazy old “girlie” theatres. This one also provides an added bonus of first-first shooter games, should the clientele tire of naked women.

The Granville Mall also caters to other male fantasies, aside from food, sex, and guns – here pseudo-camoflage gear attracts a couple of middle-aged passers-by.

I find it interesting how the curvature of my camera lens makes the tall buildings seem to lean in and converge on the narrow strip of Georgia Street heading off into the distance.

This street artist absorbed in his work is ignored by most people who seem not to notice that his drawing of a lion is actually quite good.

The inappropriately-named Hotel Regal is the last of a dying breed on the gentrifying Granville strip, the single-room occupancy hotel. Its blank grey exterior does not exactly provide a welcoming face to any who might consider staying here.

See more here.

I purchased a new wide angle lens and, of course, immediately had to try it out on some of my favorite places in downtown Vancouver.

Riding around the city on my bicycle, I snapped some pictures of this beauty, the creek-side Time Top sculpture by Jerry Pethick,

and this Equestrian Monument by David Robinson, installed at the Yaletown Skytrain Station. I like this bronze sculpture of a bound man on his wild-eyed horse, the horse’s body much too small for its enormous head. A bit further away, the 1912 Sun Tower on Beatty Street is framed by the ubiquitous construction cranes.

Here’s some information about this building from Pacificmetropolis.com: Vancouverites might be interested to know that it was originally called the World Tower, as it had been built by Louis Denison Taylor, publisher of the World newspaper, and Vancouver’s longest serving mayor.

Apparently the building’s nine barebreasted maidens caused quite the scandal when it was first unveiled to the public in 1912.

In 1924, the Vancouver Sun bought the struggling World, but did not move into the World Building until 1937, when the Sun’s offices burned down. At that point, the building was renamed the Sun Tower – a name that it has retained ever since, despite the fact that the Vancouver Sun has since moved on to another building itself.

For more information on the Sun Tower and additional pictures, link here to Vancouverhistory.ca‘s website. Wikipedia has a brief entry on the Sun Tower as well – link here.

The so-called International Village, a transitional neighbourhood inbetween Yaletown and Chinatown, has a somewhat Parisian-inspired plaza which is home to the T&T Supermarket and little else.

The International Village Shopping Centre is a vast wasteland of space with a few seldom-visited shops, an interesting art gallery and the Tinseltown Cinema. Reviews of this shopping space refer to it as something that could be straight out of a Dawn of the Dead movie set. I was kicked out by an officious security guard for taking pictures, even though it had no sign posted indicating that picture-taking was off-limits.

The Vancouver Library proved to be a more congenial photographic model, its colosseum-like structure making interesting shapes against the sky. Finished in 1995 and designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, this building’s design is one of Vancouver’s most popular. Perhaps the Roman colosseum quotation is a reference to the power of words …

The Woodward’s redevelopment project in the Downtown Eastside is gentrifying an old “skid row”  niehgbourhood into something more palatable for the wealthy upwardly-mobile urbanites  moving into the “W Tower” flat-iron building at the site of the former department store shuttered for the past several years.

This downtown alleyway is one of my favorites. It boasts some fantastic graffiti and visual social commentary.

See more pictures here.

I thought that a small intervention into the 2010 Vancouver Biennale sculptures might be interesting so I hopped on my bike on a sunny day not too long ago, carrying with me my anatomical head, plastic mannequin hands, a tiny doll and three plastic apples for that purpose. My first stop was the gigantic bronze head entitled Eros Scrippolato at Yaletown Park on which  I placed the head and hands.

Here is the blurb from the Biennale site on this sculpture:

Eros Bendato Scrippolato (Eros blindfolded and cracked) is a bronze sculpture made to look like a fragment of an ancient monument to Eros, the god of love. Known as Amor in Latin and Cupid in Roman mythology, Eros is the youngest, most mischievous, and beautiful of the immortal gods. Often portrayed with his arrows, Eros is represented here as blind folded, suggesting that love is blind, and also that Eros victims were randomly selected.

My next stop was along the seawall past the Plaza of Nations, with Science World in the background.

I also thought a small insertion into one of the environmental globes gracing the wallway around Science World might be appropriate.

Next stop was the Sun Yat Sen Park in Chinatown, then the Jubilee Sculpture studio on Main Street,

the Main Street viaduct overlooking the docks,

Crab Park with the sails of Canada Place in the background

I’ve always loved the woven reed canoe hidden in the trees here.

I rolled along the waterfront, under Canada Place and up the elevator to the new Convention Centre where the Olympic Cauldron sits centre stage.

Back down on the Coal Harbour seawall I stopped at Sorel Etrog’s sculpture King and Queen

and the bronze man by Jacquie Metz and Nancy Chew.

I finished my ride with a stop at the Buschlen Mowatt Gallery on Georgia Street, where my body parts joined forces with “Overflow” and “Love”,

then onward to the Shangri La hotel to contemplate Ken Lum’s From Shangri La to Shangri La installation of squatters’ huts.

See more here.

Another day, another bike ride, this time with my barbies and plastic animals …

See more here.