Wednesday, December 31, 2014

j'ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies...*



 the ascension of viridescent clouds towards mars
obligates the secular twilight of the northern skies

 with scant deposits of crystalline dust upon black earth
are small gatherings in quick time before night falls

and closes up tight behind a serpentine continuum
without the veiled urgency of an unstoppable flow...

"Les Fleuves m'ont laissé descendre où je voulais
Dans les clapotements furieux des marées..."*

["The rivers let me drift down where I would
Down through the furious splashing of the tides..."]


* selected lines from "Le Bateau ivre" by Arthur Rimbaud [1854-1891]

Friday, December 26, 2014

j'ai rêvé du ciel rougeoyant...



 the year is ending in flashes of infrared red
floated into the ambiguity of a porous reveal


 in the darkness sprouting rare amanita crowns
to ignite the delirium pulled into a frozen net


 of silver threads wrapped in concrete foil
spark growth the evercrimson tree of lucidity


free-soaring into the cardinal space of night
with no full safety floor to turn back to...


Wednesday, July 23, 2014

east van picto graphs


 contingent upon a new theatrical rendering
from west coast reduction, the stink continues...

mainlining to the sweet bone of contention,
locking the metal door behind irreversible lives...

 his popsicle head's off to the crewlest cut of all to
roll down the commercial grade of sharpshooters...

before they carve her up in her flattened state with
a farcical warning neatly drawn in driedberry blood...

in the mystical event that she is still missing nearby
such dis-missives must be obeyed beyond the pale...

and so must an elder legionnaire of foreign means
slump wasted on the back stairs of mitigated loyalty...

a piece of rust toast smeared with milk flames torn
from the corrugated trunk of her stomping grounds...

when does it stop for this whirring craziness to land
upon the concrete implications of a single domicile...


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

*jan's studio:: pulpifying on




*This post will be the first in a series of photo essays on artists' studios in Vancouver [and hopefully beyond] that I plan to have published in book form one day. 
As my home has always been an ever (r)evolving studio for my varied projects, I am also intrigued by the environs where other artists' creative lives are manifest, and I feel that their milieux should be documented somewhat more as "art installations" in their own right and not just as functioning work spaces where tangible art is birthed. And as such, they may reflect the artistic personalities of the occupants more profoundly than even their own art can.

This idea is inspired in part by a book that I had found in France many years ago titled Entrails, Heads & Tails by Paola Igliori [colour photography by Paola Igliori and black and white photographs by Alastair Thain] published by Rizzoli, 1992.
"In a world where everything is analyzed, fragmented, crucified, we seem at times to lose ourselves in the process. Artists, like children, are the most absolute in creating, materializing their own world. The small everyday things that cover the space between the person and his work chart at times in the simplest way the ground of inspiration."  
[from Paola Igliori's introduction to her book]

 +++


Jan MacLeod is the first artist to have kindly let me into her studio and given me permission to shoot what I wanted. She has been making paper and artwork from plant materials that she gathers herself for over 30 years now in these two adjoining rooms in a heritage office building in downtown Vancouver.
Jan's dedication to her artform has seen her prodigious creations grace many homes, offices and luxury hotels. She is a long time member of the Circle Craft Co-operative on Granville Island.


 














Jan MacLeod


I would like to thank Jan for her gracious welcome into her plantpapersphere.

Monday, June 9, 2014

ann's house:: emptying out


a bare rod and two wire hooks
in an empty closet where the
orange carpet has not faded
 white cotton sheets shield the
emptied shelves where fruits in
mason jars were once stacked
in the rec room a few boxes of
old board games sit on a counter
above the now empty cupboards
 the bar shelves where bottles stood
and glasses perched, some to be
filled on those cold empty nights
 the lone lamp left stranded on the
paneled wall glows a forlorn survey
to soft lit the quiet emptied room
the twin beds up in the attic room
are for sale, along with the three
bedside tables long emptied out
strewn on top of a shag rug are
some old frames and scrapbooks
emptied of photos and memories
 two empty vases at a dollar apiece
wait to be filled with bouquets again
bright as the one painted on the tray
the dull red basement door is locked,
bolted and barred as always, even
while the house is emptying all out


Ann and her late husband Lou had lived in this house for 60 years - 60 years of cumulative belongings to empty out, to eviscerate piece by piece to the best offer of the nostalgic gatherers, the predatory collectors, the ambivalent deal seekers... [addendum: in the end, what did not sell was trucked away by junk removers who charged Ann much more than she ever paid for any of it brand new]

When the house is emptied of the last chair, lamp, book, picture, ornament, tool, memory - will it remain to be re-modelled and refilled with new chairs, lamps, books - or will it die in a dusty heap of splintered wood, crushed doors and shattered glass... [addendum: it died a most destructive death, the whole lot obliterated in a day except for the single holly tree on the southeast corner, and now, a dull red duplex with cream trims has replaced the old white house with the bright red trims]

I preserve a few images of this home in memory of Lou who built everything in it, who tended the garden meticulously, whose paintbrush was ever handy for a fresh coat, and who died in his own house - never having to see it now, in its sadly empty state... [addendum: all gone now, wiped out and replaced like it had never been there...how quickly the memory clicks off and long lives dissipate]


Sunday, May 25, 2014

emily carr grad show:: scaling up

Another year and another round of peaking art students presented their final flourishes before dispersing into the all-knowing world at large - with their fame-inflamed aspirations, or more humble hope to practice the skill set and art doctrines impressed into their spongy young minds - perhaps doses of meticulously cultivated talent is enough, perhaps a web of auspicious connections will propel some, perhaps just being true to their artistic authenticity will stand the test of time...

At this year's usual sprawling show, there is more than a whiff of sophisticated whimsy in the air, more of an upscale polished quality that can grace the most discerning gallery - abstracted symphonic forms floating in white space as well as starkly powerful works that are minimalist yet saturated with cryptic orders.


One installation by Parvin Peivandi is a multi-media dance of convoluted metal rods upholding ceramic "heads" of partial Persian motifs, all purist white and untainted by the slick pool of black oil they spring from - a work loaded with geo-eco-political metaphors and yet its lightness of being does not confront nor confound...



Wood scraps thoughtfully assembled and formulated by Angela Smailes into sculptural maquettes present as miniature sculpture in their own right - the compendious delicacy of each piece holding its own - and despite their constructivist abtractness, some read as vaguely familiar creatures in various states of composure. Isolated from each other on their individual perches, each is accorded a relevance unto itself and yet floats together in the general display as part of a giant discordant puzzle...






Long titles seem to fixate one's attention to certain work - ones that are purely descriptive in an overtly wordy mouthful such as Eric Miranda's "Five Ways of Transporting a Sphere on Three Ways of Displaying Five Ways of Transporting a Sphere" where pretty pink and lilac and lemon nippled rubber balls are attached to, bound with, and hung from various appendages in a playful and wholly inarticulate manner...





Michelle O'Byrne's descriptive narrative of "young man and woman embracing as a romantic couple on a tropical beach destination" for a wall installation that has no such wholesome image depicted in full and yet the delicate combination of the framed print, the finely strung horizon line dropping down to an ephemeral strip of sea/sky blue panel resting on the floor below all play to the heightened sensuality shimmering in a sanitized and magazine-glossy beach resort where one should always question one's true motives for being there...



Good old school painting wise, this pair of garages convulses in waves of gooey paint - the banal subject portrayed in prowling darkness, one spotted with a bright sensor bulb, the other lit by neighbouring windows, both depicted with such insouciant yet assured brushstrokes that only raw and ready talent can beget...Gillian Richards, you rock my paint can!



Wei Cheng's grouping of black glazed urns festooned with gilded strands of rough-edged clay asserted themselves in stately glamour - in a piece called "Zen", the vessel is tilted downwards as if surrendering to the binding embrace of its ribbon of gold, in another called "Convergence", the tall upright urn is spewing writhing golden snakes over a faceless Medusa already turned herself to stone...




These exquisite and mysterious pod vessels by Aileen Arduin convey a Georgia O'Keeffe-like essence of erotic benediction - at once eerily beautiful with their secretive folds retreating into darkness and immaculately executed in their conceptual other-worldliness...



The primal-potent effect of this sculpture by Porowski S. Jacek is in your face immediate and technically hyper-controlled - implications of transgression in the splitting of the wood and of intransition in the binding and holding in place - a subscribed violation as naturalist as the silk smooth cherry trunk and as brutalist as the cold hard cement wedge...



Sometimes downspotting yields the most intriguing rewards, and as such, "Architecting Absolutes" by Madison Killough trips the mind in an unassuming game of cornered disregard - and sometimes art should just simply imitate perception at its most base level in order to raise awareness of a more intuited state of cognition...



In the darkness of a narrow closet, the small screen flickers with splotchy black moons, mesmerizing in its randomness and in its constancy - what could be more purely universal than rudimentary particles flashing in isolation and somewhat into perpetuity... "O" by Hannah MacAulay


Emily Carr University of Art and Design
Graduation Show 2014
ended May 18