carlyn yandle
  • blog
  • painting
  • public art
  • sculpture & mixed media
  • exhibitions
  • about
  • contact

Gritty beauty seen in foundations of this pretty city

2/28/2017

Comments

 
Picture
It feels like the Internet has killed the fun of taking snapshots of beautiful cities and people. So many times over the last four months in Mexico I've raised my camera (phone) to capture an impressive bronze sculpture or some baroque church facade then thought: This is pointless. A Google-image search with a few key words (Guanajuato, musicians, Don Quixote, Pipila) would produce hundreds of better-quality stock photos. We're saturated in instagrammable images. I miss those old pocket travel photo albums.

This might explain all the selfie sticks threatening to take your eye out in the crowded plazas on any given night here; putting yourself in the picture with all the famous stuff behind will guarantee a unique photo.

So I have very little in terms of a photographic record for my time here. Every view of the strolling musicians in the plazas, or the teenage girls decked in ballgowns for their quinceanera (debut) parties, the food vendors, the street singers dressed in Renaissance-style hose and puffed velvet jackets are already done. So done.

Then last week I finally started to see that the one signature-Guanajuato element that I've been captivated by is actually a worthy photo subject: the retaining walls that barely seem to be holding back the jumble of colourful, cubic houses clinging to the surrounding hills.

There's a compelling visual story in those layers of peeling paint on crumbling plaster on adobe bricks stacked on crudely cut limestone foundations. The traces of human activity in one section of wall speaks to the human habitation in this city that has its roots in the 1500s. It's quite a study in social history and handwork, an unplanned, almost invisible beauty, especially to a tourist whose port town of Vancouver has been replaced by a gleaming, pristine city of glass.

I'm seeing them as found abstracts, images of unintentional collages and mixed-media works by generations of people who work with their hands.
​
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Comments





    Get this column by email:

    * indicates required

    RSS Feed

    browse by topic:

    All
    Abstract Painting
    Activism
    Additive
    Aesthetics
    AgentC Gallery
    Alison Woodward
    Aluminum
    Appropriation
    Architecture
    Arleigh Wood
    Art
    Art Discourse
    Art History
    Artist
    Artist Residency
    Artist Statement
    Art School
    Art Show
    Art Spiegelman
    Assemblage
    Author
    Banksy
    Bauhaus
    Beauty
    Betsy Greer
    Big Data
    Billy Patko
    Blogs
    Blog Tour
    Bob Krieger
    Books
    Bruce MacKinnon
    Building
    Bull Kelp
    Business
    Buttons
    Carlyn Yandle
    Caroline Eriksson
    Cartoon
    Ceca Georgieva
    Challenge
    Children
    Christmas
    Cindy Sherman
    Cirque Du Soleil
    City Planning
    Cityspace Gallery
    Clay Yandle
    Climate Change
    Cluster
    Cob
    Cob Oven
    Collaboration
    Collage
    Color
    Colour
    Commission
    Composition
    Conceptual Art
    Connie Sabo
    Construction
    Craft
    Craft Blogs
    Craftivism
    Crafts
    Craftsmanship
    Creative Process
    Critique
    Crochet
    Cultural Hub
    Cultural Studies
    Culture
    Culture Jamming
    Culturejammingc9d75664fd
    Cycling
    Dafen Village
    Dallas-duobaitis
    Dance
    Data-graphic
    Dear Human
    Deep Craft
    Denyse Thomasos
    Design
    Display
    Distraction
    Doilies
    Doily
    Domestic
    Domestic Interventions
    Douglas-coupland
    Draw Down
    Drawing
    DSquared2
    Dude-chilling-park
    Dyeing
    Eastend
    Eastside Culture Crawl
    Ecuad
    Editorial
    Edward Burtynsky
    Eggbeater Creative
    Embroidery
    Emily Blincoe
    Emily Carr University
    Environment
    Environmental Art
    Exhibit
    Exhibition
    Experimentation
    Expression
    Fabric
    Fabricating
    Facebook
    Failure
    Fashion
    Festival
    Fiber
    Fibre
    Fibre Arts
    Film
    Flow
    Foraging
    Form
    Found Objects
    Fractal
    Free Store
    Gallery
    Gallery-row
    Garden
    Garment
    Gentrification
    Gingerbread
    Globalization
    Glue
    Graffiti
    Granny Square
    Granville-island
    Green Space
    Grid
    Guanajuato
    Guerrilla Art
    Guerrilla Girls
    Halloween
    Handwork
    Haywood Bandstand
    Health
    Hideki-kuwajima
    Hot Art Wet City
    Ian Reid
    Ian Wallace
    Ideas
    Images
    Industrial Design
    Industry
    Innovation
    Inspiration
    Instagram
    Installation
    Invention
    Irena Werning
    Janet Wang
    Joel Bakan
    Joseph Beuys
    Joseph-wu
    Journalism
    Kim Piper Werker
    Kimsooja
    Knitting
    Knotting
    Kyoto
    Landon Mackenzie
    Landscape
    Leanne Prain
    Lecture
    Liz Magor
    Lost Painting
    Lumiere Festival
    Lynda Barry
    Macrame
    Maker
    Making
    Malcolm Gladwell
    Male Gaze
    Maquette
    Marie Kondo
    Marketing
    Mark Lewis
    Martha Rosler
    Media
    Meditative
    Metalworker
    Mister Rogers
    Mixed Media
    Monique Motut-Firth
    Monte Clark
    Mosaic
    Motivation
    Mt. Pleasant Community Centre
    Mud Girls
    Mural
    Natalie Jeremijenko
    Nature
    Needlework
    Neon
    Net
    Network
    Networking
    Neuroplasticity
    New Forms Festival
    Newspapers
    Nick Cave
    Noah Goodis
    North Vancouver
    Omer Arbel
    Openings
    Organization
    #overthinking
    Paint
    Painting
    Paper
    Pattern
    Pechakucha
    Pecha Kucha
    Perception
    Performance
    Performance Art
    Photography
    Playing
    Political Art
    Polly-apfelbaum
    Pompidou
    Poodle
    Port Coquitlam
    Portrait
    Process
    Production
    Project
    Protest
    Psychedelic
    Public Art
    Qr Code
    Quilt
    Quilting
    Rachael Ashe
    Rachel Lafo
    Raw Materials
    Recycle
    Research
    Retreat
    Rhonda Weppler
    Richard-tetrault
    Richmond Art Gallery
    Right Brain
    Rondle-west
    Rug
    Ryan-mcelhinney
    Safety
    Sarah-gee-miller
    Saskatchewan
    Scale
    Sculpture
    Seaweed
    Semiotics
    Sewing
    Sharon Kallis
    Shawn Hunt
    Shigeru Ban
    Sketchup
    Social Engagement
    Social-engagement
    Social History
    Social Justice
    Social Media
    South-granville
    Stitching
    Storage
    Street Art
    Studio
    Surrealism
    Surrey
    Tagging
    Technology
    Terry Fox Theatre
    Textile
    Thrift Stores
    TJ Watt
    TO DO
    Tools
    Toronto Design Offsite
    Toybits
    Trevor Mahovsky
    Upcycling
    Urban Design
    Use Object
    Use Objects
    Vancouver
    Vancouver Art Gallery
    Vancouver International Airport
    Video
    Visual Field
    Visual-field
    Visual Language
    Wallace Stegner House
    Weaving
    William Morris
    Wood
    Wool
    Writing
    Yarn Bombing
    YVR
    Zaha Hadid
    Zendoodle

    RSS Feed

Powered by
✕