sinosigns

 be they painted over...

brushed onto stone...

 gilded onto glass...

 affixed onto walls...

scripted horizontally or vertically,
these signs in Chinatown have no need of english translations to convey the character of the sites they adorn...

*this should be an auspicious post to announce the release of the first album of my son Enzio's band Half Chinese..."We were Pretending to be" (Sad Games Records, 2012)

sun yat sen:: upspotting

a classical chinese garden enclosed by high white walls crouches on the edges of Vancouver's Chinatown and the downtown eastside - an intrepid tourist destination to be sure, but more so a serene gracenote in this gritty neighbourhood, an elemental sanctuary from the burgeoning urban dissonance, a reined in tranquil refuge for asian sensibilities...

on one very cold afternoon a week after all the chinese new year celebrations were over, I felt the urge to capture some quiet non-festive pieces of traditional chinese heritage within this verdant landscaped and architectural formulaic courtyard - I panned down for the water reflection series in the previous posting and I glimpsed upwards for this one...

latching onto structural details that are weathering in the most artful fashion - the worn mossy rooftiles softly presenting the pale pink blooms of an early blossoming cherry, the staccato splashes of providential reds in a patinaed palette of greys and whites, the calligraphic web of bare branches against the signage of intricate chinese characters, and the pre-spring budding in the warmth of the peeling red lacquered gateway...

water dragon leapyear

The old man from Shao-ling,

weeping inwardly,

Slips out by stealth in Spring

and walks by Serpentine,

 

And on its riverside

sees the locked Palaces,

Young willows and new reeds

all green for nobody;

 

Where Rainbow Banners once

went through South Gardens,

Gardens and all therein

with merry faces:

 

Where limpid River Wei's

waters flow Eastward,

One goes, the other stays

 and has no tidings:

 

Though Pity, all our hours,

weeping remembers,

These waters and these flowers

remain as ever;

[selected verses from "Lament by the Riverside" by Tu Fu (A.D. 712-770) Translated by Arthur Cooper, 1973]

DTES SEREENA

a garlanded name hangs unceremoniously from a chainlink fence on a side street off no-man's-land east hastings...
a public declaration of love for sweet Sereena who lives or works nearby perhaps -
or a poignant commemoration for some sad Sereena who is missing or lost or worse...

once in a while I come across one of these evergreen name garlands strung out from a derelict setting - a mysteriously handmade reminder of the somber reality of such a being with that particular name -
who is she, who was she... is she still?

[BRENDA from two summers ago...]

*postscriptum:: I have since discovered the artist and the raison d'etre of this project posted on this site www.evergreen26.blogspot.com

carpetcity

a miniature ghost city rises from a magic carpet site - its buildings' floor plans determined by the intricate geometrical patterns of the woven designs...
the architectural style is complex-contemporary-monumental and the models are elaborately detailed with multi-leveled towers and zig-zagging side protrusions...
the pure whiteness of the forms contrasting solidly with the rich colour scheme of the persian carpet, and yet the constructed pieces seem all the more fantastical...

from the self-contained compactness of the area specific carpet city, the gallery space expands with partial full size undulating walls as outlined in some of the maquettes...
the white-washed wall constructions are suggestive of Malevich's suprematist vision of abstract  geometric forms soaring in a white universal space, as their white on white structuring floats seductively as cubistic apparitions around every oddly angled nook and corner...

Babak Golkar  'Grounds for Standing and Understanding" at the Charles H. Scott Gallery, 

Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 

Granville Island

January 18th to Frebruary 26th, 2012

dot dot dot... stripes---

without the perkiness of such contagious red spots the modest post-war bungalow and her attendant garage above would be plainer than jane...

and without the bright  blue and green horizontal banding on these humble eastside apartment buildings below they would be much less average that joe...
 

elephantangential

elephantemporal

elephantalisman

 elephantaedium vitae
 

furtive states...

raincloud suddenly rents the embroidered walls...

the feast over, emptiness asserts itself once more... 

souls dissolved in the dream seek each other without end... 

 

[selected lines from 'To the air of "Mulan Hua"' by Li Yu, the last emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty]
 

alight upon the season...

we know where we are...

we float a lit cross to let others know that they have arrived at a juncture...

the red star on a green cone is incidental, inscriptive of a seasonal adaptation...

and beyond the lights, it is not so dark over there after all...

esoteric corners

In a time when the idea of attending a place of worship seems a quaint and almost antiquated activity, such places still continue to exist and flourish with their own dedicated followers, often tucked into residential neighbourhoods where they sometimes crouch inconspicuously on quiet corners and where their architecturally diverse edifices do not overwhelm the scale of the houses on their streets...
I have always admired the minimal nordic variant of art deco styling of the church above on the corner of East 19th and Prince Albert Street built by the local Danish community in the 1930's as the first Danish Lutheran Church in Vancouver - Saint Ansgar's congregation has long since moved out of the city to another location...

The Shiv Mandir-Shree Sanatan Dharam Ramayan Mandali of Fiji has served as a Hindu temple for the last 30 years after being a Presbyterian church when it was raised in 1908 on the corner of Napier Street and Salsbury Drive...

Hidden behind the trees on a high corner above 810 East 13th Avenue is the mysterious Russian Synodal Orthodox Church with its small but distinctive blue onion dome and gilded icon above the entrance doors...

Around the corner from the bustling produce stalls of Norman's on Commercial Drive and Graveley Street is the slightly forlorn looking Chinese Grace Mennonite Church housed in an old apartment building...

And in a tranquil pocket above Clark Park on the corner of East 18th Avenue and Fleming Street stands the always immaculately maintained German Saint Markus Lutheran Church bestowing its touch of Teutonic flavour to our multi-ethnic neighbourhood...