creative process - carlyn yandle

Art walk a reason to browse South Granville again

6/20/2014

The neighbourhood as it was when I lived there.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with South Granville, the shopping strip between 6th and 16th Avenues.

This was the neighbourhood of my first apartment, a $350-per-month studio in the old Greenwood Lodge, in the '80s. It was also the first-apartment area of family members reaching back to the 1950s. This is where my boyfriend brought home deli from Szasz's, cornish pasties from the butcher and cinnamon buns from the bakery next to that.

My last job as newspaper editor was in the former Pitman secretarial school, in the historic Dick Building at Broadway and Granville. I moved into my office when the only trace of the old Aristocratic restaurant on the opposite corner was the refurbished neon sign in the newly built Chapters.

For the next five years I had a front row seat for the neighbourhood transition from the clutter of green grocers and diners to high-end designer clothing and objet shops. During my last months at the newspaper, the strip started to reek of exclusivity and it became quite the challenge to find a place to buy a banana or a pair of socks. Today it is identified as a food desert and the outgoing point of exodus for several art galleries, due to high rents and lack of space.

Despite the bad rap, there are some good upscale galleries that make South Granville a reason to browse, especially this Saturday (June 21, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.) during the 3rd annual Art Walk (map). The 18 galleries and antique dealers that form what the retailer-community association has dubbed Gallery Row is putting out the coffee and cookies, hosting artist talks and demos and generally readying themselves for a spike in walk-in traffic. It's a smart move that is no doubt in reaction to the loss of key galleries Winsor, Monte Clark, and Equinox to 'The Flats.'

If you've ever wanted to see inside those slightly intimidating spaces, this is the day.

Learning to play, to learn

5/29/2014

I would rather watch the little kids in my life play than watch the best TV. But it's tricky because they don't like to be observed and if they feel I'm too interested, they are on to me and it all comes to a halt.

I have to refrain from the urge to referee, guide, demonstrate or facilitate. Because it's only when they're sure the adults are not interested that the seriously unstructured play comes on, with all its small power struggles and shared moments of joy. (See legendary Lynda Barry talk about play at the end of this post.)

I'm fascinated by the ability of kids to spontaneously engage in creative collaboration (a.k.a. 'play') with other kids they didn't know 10 minutes before. It's a lesson in the power of putting ourselves out there creatively, to let go of control and all expectations.

Playing with toy bits after hours at the VAG. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

In the past week, I took my inner kid out to play with strangers in two distinct venues: the Vancouver Art Gallery, in preparation for the opening of Douglas Coupland's major solo show, and at the first Arts & Crafts Social at a small Mount Pleasant neighbourhood gallery.

After-hours at the Vancouver Art Gallery, we were all quickly introduced before we were invited to attack and stack Coupland's priceless/useless toy bits to assemble his imposing 'Brick Wall' at the entrance of the exhibit, under the artist's direction. We were just playing but in retrospect we were problem-solving issues of density, colour, weight, communication, and give-and-take. We were just talking but on reflection we were wrangling with issues of value, object-images, collections, consumption, globalization and categorization.

A few days later, I hauled out one of my portable projects and headed to the inaugural Arts & Crafts Social (#HAWCsocial) at Hot Art Wet City Gallery hosted by Rachael Ashe and Kim Werker.

The beauty of a drop-in, BYOP (project) event is that if you're feeling a little shy, at least you have your work to focus until you're comfortable enough to mingle. The tables soon filled up with conversation-starters beyond the beer and wine: stabby felt needles, crochet and rug hooks, Thai take-out, Sharpies on canvas, a digital drawing pad and an old manual typewriter.

You play, you learn — about other methods, applications, directions. And you get to hang with people not typical of your usual social circle. To me it was worth the admission-by-donation just to get a glimpse of the unrestrained mind of Billy Patko (below, left). Which got me thinking: what would Patko's prolific doodles look like in a large-scale format? (See Photoshop'd sketch, below.)

Just playing.

Coupland's show, Everywhere is Anywhere is Anything is Everything runs May 31 to Sept.1. The next Arts & Crafts Social at Hot Art Wet City is June 25, 7:30 - 11pm.

How not to crash at the big art shows

5/9/2014

The mammoth art museum experience is like an all-inclusive resort for the mind: there's so much coming at you the brain binges 'til it can't party anymore.

Unless you're an art history major, what's hanging on those soaring walls and placed on those marble floors at the big art palaces like the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum and The Met is filled with cranial-clanging mystery, intrigue, obscurity, beauty and repulsion that can crash the whole neural system in something approaching Stendhal Syndrome. There's only so much visual field one garden-variety brain can take in. You need to pace yourself, preferably over several days.

Alison Woodward's emblematic, multi-layered drawings suggest carcasses.

Same goes for big education-institution shows so this is the how I tackle the annual Emily Carr University Grad Show, now open daily until May 18 on Vancouver's Granville Island.

With hundreds of final works in media arts, sculpture, industrial design, ceramics, illustration and visual arts packed into two buildings I take the cavernous rooms of randomness in small bursts over a few days, usually with one friend at a time — a sort of playdate. But the only thing organized about this date is the area of creative work we're going to linger in. It's the difference between sports on a school field and free play in the forest.

The real play is in the conversation that is sparked just by being in the milieu of this cacophonous visual field. It might start off as first impressions of an individual piece but often ends up in a whole different kind of thinking, and that's where the exhilaration lies. It's all just as important in the creative process as working in the studio.

The beauty of online column-writing is infinite space, so, in the spirit of the gargantuan art museum and its daunting theme-free collections, as well as the need to let the brain out to play, I present here a few of my own pics of emerging visual artists at this year's Emily Carr grad show whose works contest the two-dimensional tradition.

A detail from Jessica Probyn's large gestural painting reveals a threaded leaf-shaped garland.

The ethereal effect of Colette Stubbings' large 'Channeling Dreams' is enhanced by a ground of creased, ripped and crumpled paper.

Rose Fior's 'Ominous I' is an off-square panel that includes areas of gouging, thin washed and dimensional globs of paint.

The visceral subject of Sarah Erica Berman Goble's work moves from two grounds of paper to the wall itself.

A detail of Scott Lewis' inked, ripped paper on canvas evokes both disputed public spaces and stark landscapes.

Maya Gulin explores the pattern effects of acrylic in this detail of her deftly layered mixed media painting.

cultural community under threat in sparkling city

5/2/2014

My daily work corner is one-third of a shared 800-square-foot studio of a mouldering building in the shadow of numerous condo-tower cranes in Mount Pleasant, with a combined rent of more than $1,000 per month. In the four years that I've managed to hold onto this little space I've watched Development Permit Application signs go up on one decrepit building after another. The signs go up, then all the resident independent visual artists, industrial designers, musicians, film industry workers, writers and performers get packing.

But where to go is a serious problem. A healthy city has a rich culture but the places to actually do that hard work are rare or too costly to consider in this town. Everyone knows someone who has given up trying and moved to Toronto. It's getting to the point where some artist friends have decided to remain in Vancouver — at least for the moment — because they just can't abandon the struggling cultural community.

It's an odd feeling, working in adverse conditions to ensure a vibrant cultural life in the milieu of the city's glassy wealth. Surely some of those speculative development dollars could actually help stem the tide that threatens to replace every last independent bookstore, gallery cafe and theatre into one long avenue of Shoppers Drug Marts, bank branches and Starbucks.

This is why, despite a general wariness about any artisan-party-backed events, I and a couple of friends hit the Fox theatre last Thursday for a Vision Vancouver-backed community forum on protecting the city's cultural spaces. When you want to be part of the conversation on this critical topic you go where there are ears.

Everyone from young street performers to retired folks bent on protecting threatened venues packed the revamped former porno theatre last Thursday evening — the perfect venue for showcasing what is possible with a council that is increasingly promoting the value of city culture of all kinds.

The entrepreneur behind the Fox, Ernesto Gomez (Waldorf, Nuba, etc.) was there on stage as part of a panel led by city councillor Heather Deal that included fellow councillor Geoff Meggs; Kate Armstrong, director of Emily Carr University's Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre; and Esther Rausenberg, head of the Eastside Culture Crawl. The vibe was one of simmering frustration but there was also warmth generated by the obvious show that we are all in this together.

From left: Coun. Geoff Meggs, Kate Armstrong, Ernesto Gomez, Esther Rausenberg, Coun. Heather Deal. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Deal dealt her summation the next day, based on notes she was taking during the roving-mike portion of the evening:
"Development needs to deliver more for local culture. Arts and culture needs to be treated as a public good. That we need zoning to enable independent businesses and cultural groups to succeed, not push them out. And that it's not just about creating studio space, it's the need for rehearsal and production space too."

But things are getting better, as many noted at the forum. The relatively new food truck program and more reasonable liquor licensing laws are both driving audiences and sales at local festivals and venues; car-free events like the city's biggest free music and art fest, Khatsalano and Car Free Day on the Drive have turned radical notions into much-loved draws.

Miniature portraits by artists of the Phantoms in the Front Yard Collective

And the squeeze on work and show space has resulted in some fresh, unconventional art shows in opportunistic spaces, like shipping containers or urban alleys. Last Friday it was a pop-up show, Everyone I've Never Known, in three units of the retro Burrard hotel. Only in one of the most expensive cities in the world will you find serious collectors crowding into tiny hotel rooms to snap up the miniature graphite and pencil portraits — proof that artists will continue to create, even if at a scale that doesn't demand studio space.

The unfathomable drives next generation of artists

4/17/2014

Detail from Emily Carr Masters student Duobaitis' ink on board work, '(re) formatting', 2014.

How we're feeling about our place in an uncertain world is evident on art school walls.

This is where the next generation of emerging artists grapples with the shape-shifting natural and built environment, consciously or subconsciously.

The increasingly puzzling, distracted, technically fraught visual field reflects students' reactions and responses to the relentless and devastating images of catastrophe and the bombardment of data-graphics, encompassing everything from micro-surgical robots to data-graphics on global human migration patterns.

It's all enough to make a person retreat to a quiet corner to knit or knot. Or draw. Or collage. Or build.

Dallas Duobaitis' recent work in his first year Masters program deals with some of those topics — maybe. That's the beauty of abstracted images; they engage the ideas and thoughts of the viewer who is also negotiating this particular, uncertain time and space. This artwork resonates because it is of our time.

Detail from Motut-Firth's installation (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Monique Motut-Firth (disclosure: friend) also grapples with those themes in her first-year Masters installation, part of the It's Not You, It's Me show at the Concourse Gallery. Her found print images of largely domestic objects (including pictures of women) are meticulously constructed into robot-esque clusters that hover on the gallery wall, in conversation with Duobaitis' work that includes a motion-sensor-activated oculus/dream-catcher contraption (see below).

This emerging genre of work is not created in a Vancouver vacuum but is in conversation with creatives all over the world, in reaction to innovations that provide answers to problems but also more questions, as seen in this documentary from Japan on the future of robots in our daily lives and this one on the horrifying/banal reality of surveillance in the UK.

Duobaitis and his latest installation at Emily Carr University.

***
The Emily Carr University gallery walls have since been transformed for the annual Foundation Show, often the very first showing of work from the university's first year students as young as 18 and from all over the world. The Foundation Show continues to April 26.

Motion sensors activate Duobaitis' chilling/thrilling installation of metal and threads. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

craftsmanship at the core of paper art show

4/4/2014

Clockwise from top: Connie Sabo, Rachael Ashe and Sarah Gee Miller with their respective works. (Carlyn Yandle photos)

Sarah Gee Miller says she's pretty handy. That's the understatement of the evening. Her paper 'paintings' are not only visually stunning and conceptually rich but they resonate with the dedication of a serious craftsman.

Funny how the word 'crafts' only gets the serious respect it deserves when the 'man' is attached to it. Suddenly the mind moves from, say, knitting or embroidering to, say, boat-building or blacksmithing. Here at the Voices from Another Room show at the Hot Art Wet City gallery, the craftsmanship is here in the medium of paper.

It's that juxtaposition between the humble, ephemeral material and the heavy-duty skill and commitment of craftsmanship that makes this show of five artists' work so compelling. The results of that individual devotional patience, determination, repetition is on view. And I can attest that there's also frustration, physical exertion, second-guessing and the flops. You don't get to this calibre of work without enduring a few hard battles.

The conceptual elements of the pieces in this group show may reference particular art genres (or not) but the methods are perhaps unconsciously rooted in this region that is built on a New World culture of self-sufficiency, innovation and handwork, in a medium fitting for this corner of the world that was built in large part on the pulp and paper industry. Location, whether in art or real estate, is everything.

The beauty of the group show that has that one connecting thread — or in this case, wood fibre — is in how far that thread can be stretched, from Miller's totemic paintings to Sabo's heavy net-like installations of twisted newspaper, to Ashe's filigree screens, to Alison Woodward's three-dimensional twisted fairytale vignettes and Joseph Wu's origami sculptures. But beyond the medium there's the other connecting thread of craftsmanship, which Wu articulates as both a scientific and artistic exploration.

This is a show of skill that is developed through the often meditative repetitive act of carving or twisting or folding, but the art is in the repetition of those expanding skills. It is how Sabo's net works have led her to ideas about laminating newspaper blocks, or how Miller's paper paintings grew out of her own drawing machine.

"The open relation between problem solving and problem finding... builds and expands skills," according to author Richard Sennett in The Craftsman. "But this can't be a one-off event. Skill opens up in this way only because the rhythm of solving and opening up occurs again and again."

Voices from Another Room: 5 Artists Explore Paper continues to April 25, Wed-Sat noon to 5 p.m. at 2206 Main (at 6th Ave.), Vancouver.

Granville Island needs an injection of innovation

3/7/2014

Photo of ECUAD's South Building by Stephen Hui/Georgia Straight

When finally — yet suddenly — I graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, I was done, done, done, exhausted after four intense years of input. Now I needed space for four more years of output, to practice and to develop a practice.

But finding a suitable work space in this pricey city is no easy task. Self-(un)employed artists are no match for the slick technology firms and ad agencies that will pay top dollar to set up their cool premises in the port-town-era brick buildings. So we make do, sharing whatever space we can get while keeping an ear open for rumours of where we might be able to jump when the Permit Application billboard springs up in front of our crumbling building.

Intriguing shows at the Charles H. Scott Gallery include the current Hyperflat.

Another art school in another city might play a part in providing studio rental opportunities for its new grads, encouraging a healthy cross-pollination of creative post-school work in industrial design, animation, sculpture, painting, media arts and curatorial services. But Emily Carr University is bursting at the seams and is focused on its campaign to move east to Great Northern Way. It's a grand vision, but what will become of the Granville Island community when the two-building campus vacates? What of the dependable Opus Art Supplies, which depends heavily on the student customer base next door, as well as the other material suppliers on the Island? And the George H. Scott Gallery?

Vancouver Sun reporter Daphne Bramham took on the topic this week. In her story, one of the original designers of Granville Island, architect Norm Hotson, said replacing the school with another educational institution would help modernize the zone. Or it could be re-energized as "an incubator space” for "innovators", he said, or developed into a cultural hub that might include galleries, artist studios, residencies. And he pointed to Paris’s Cité Internationale des Arts as an example.

Toronto's Distillery District was revamped into a cultural hub. (Photo from Artscape website)

It's this kind of forward thinking that could stop the downtown core and Westside from slipping into a blandly privileged area with all the cultural texture of glassy high-end condos.

Granville Island needs a vibrant injection of new ideas and opportunities and Vancouver desperately needs a cultural hub, a multifunctional space with rental studios and residencies for everyone from painters to industrial designers, techies to musicians, performers to writers.

Yes, it's a balancing act. Nobody wants the Island to shut as tight as a tomb at night but the neighbours won't take kindly to the place being mobbed by booze-fueled night-crawlers. Artists and students work all hours, often after a day of slinging Italian coffees or serving Public Market customers. As students we purchase our supplies on the island, we depend on the visitors for our shows and showings. Our work ensures Granville Island is a tourist draw, not a tourist trap, that it is committed to Artisan over Ye Olde, authenticity over Disney.

It may sound like a pipe dream, but Granville Island was part of the inspiration that led the not-for-profit Artscape in Toronto to turn a collection of industrial buildings into a major cultural hub and tourist draw, in a remarkably short time. (See YouTube interview with Tim Jones, president and CEO of CityScape below.)

Duct-taping a torso just the ticket

2/21/2014

Everything I need to know I learn on blogs, at least when it comes to making stuff.

Most recently, I needed to display a knitted artwork for an upcoming show this weekend but I did not want a big ol' plastic men's torso crowding up my studio so I googled 'how to make a mannequin.'

Up popped yet another fresh and earnest blog, posted by another fresh and earnest maker. And naturally not only has she posted sequential how-to photos but does the right thing by citing the blog that originally inspired her, which happened to be the Burda patterns website in German and which she re-capped so readers aren't lost in translation. Nobody gets anything out of this deal but a little personal maker pride and a good feeling that they're sharing the love with everyone else who loves doing stuff with our hands.

I appreciate the loosey-goosey instructions that are mostly communicated in pictures, requiring innovating as I go.

And so I did learn how to make a mannequin, and it was good.

In fact, it was a damn fun Saturday afternoon activity, and it worked out just fine.
Step 1: Find a victim of the size you need.
Step 2: Put him/her in an unwanted T-shirt (it will be sacrificed for the cause).
Step 3: Wrap some plastic wrap around the neck and at the bottom edge of the torso.
Step 4: Completely wrap the torso in duct tape. One of you will get dizzy from turning.
Step 5: Cut the T-shirt/tape shell off up the back.
Step 6: Remove from victim and tape the back edges together, then tape across the neck and the armholes.
Step 7: Stuff it with cushion foam chips.
Step 8: Stick the torso on some sort of stand (floor lamp base, dowel in chunk of wood, what-have-you. (I weighted a metal stand I had lying around with a 10kg barbell plate.)
Step 9: (I added this one) Sew up a fitted black microfiber casing.
Step 10: Staple the bottom together and dress (you and the mannequin).

The best part is that once the show's over, I can de-stuff the torso, lose the base and fold away the mannequin shell for future exhibits.

Just doing my tiny part in the hive full of maker bees.