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]

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

powell less

Their world never coagulated again after the war. They were interned and then scattered, losing all that they once had in a vibrant community that was 50 years in the making across the wide ocean from their island home. They came to log and fish and cultivate and build, and within a few tumultuous months in 1942, they were all gone.

Walking along Powell Street today, there is not much to indicate that this was the main street of a once bustling Japanese community. A few buildings with Japanese names of long forgotten owners leave a faded memory of more enterprising and prosperous days. The Japanese Hall on Alexander Street was the only property redeemed by the few Japanese who returned in the 1950's and it still operates as a language school and cultural centre to this day.

The Maikawa family built their dream department store with an au courant art deco facade to house the newest and the latest - it was the largest and most modern department store in Japantown when it opened in 1936, but would all too soon be forfeited to the government. Now it sits neglected and slightly decrepit in silent resignation to its fate.

These buildings bearing the weathered and damaged signs of "Lion Hotel" and  "King Rooms" were once rooming houses above storefronts that included a traditional Japanese bath house, an archery club, an athletic club, a restaurant and even a rifle gallery. The name of "MORIMOTO" set in tiles in front of the main door has remained as a humble legacy of the mysterious namesake now long gone.

*****

The header image for savage states above is a detail of the entrance wall to the "Hotel World" built in 1912 by S. Tamura, a merchant and speculator.

floating states

 on a night like this

when you bring me

the full aurora realm

from ether streaming

 softly, softly the glass

dissolves to dry floatage

above the jetting sky

all the birds unleashed

but on these other nights

we will hang heavy within

the cool flocculus steam

of unintended savior states

sun muun

 the door may be closed

defensive syntax on guard

above cold foreign soil

invested chinese swamp

 or blank as a renouncement

barring prejudicial flames

the colour lines were drawn

and yet they are re-crossed

 a single character marks

a half number retreated

to consolations unknown

behind the multilocked door

 perhaps they soon shall pass

more inscrutable as always

but never going very far

from portals so hard won

for all the ancient societies

of the persistent secret orders

will leak a welcome of sorts

to those who can open doors

the fenestration of an empty building

when all the glass has been smashed in, the invitations go out -
edifying hosts, no bar -
the front door may be missing, but climb through the windows anyway
the lights will not come on, so
feel your way along the soggy floors, the walls still standing 
through the south facing windows, the rising moon beams into large empty rooms
negative spaces between absent furniture
when maximum capacity is reached, cast your phobic angst from the glassless openings
the cold night air is neither rational nor engaging
wait for water/drink, water/rain, water/blast
if none is forthcoming, turn inward again, away from the window arrangement to the damp warmth of a hundred bodies

avoiding all wet corners

will the morning light bring a forced surrender, flapping from a penetrating edict of sorts
interlocation is designed to draw out all those who withstood and still standing
soon they will surround the tense will compounded and block the joyless gape of a sentenced building
the political abstract to be waylaid by a loud compendium of passion
but such wholesome infestation is always assailable

beware the dangling buckets
 

fallen states

 an understatement of disrepair

hammers home the sordid truth

more will fall in exiled state

preponderances null and void