carlyn yandle
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Awkward family moment informs art-making aesthetic

7/14/2024

 
When I first started out as a suburban-newspaper reporter I had a single original artwork tacked to the wall in my basement suite. It was a life-sized acrylic-on-paper, a nude holding her maybe-pregnant belly against a landscape of spewing factories and techni-coloured streams.

I watched this gaunt, world-weary figure emerge in watery brushstrokes from the hand of the newspaper photographer's girlfriend. This is how she worked, in their basement suite, pulling yardage from a large roll of cheap paper, painting straight from her head and heart, with no plan to keep or show or sell her paintings. She saw that this one resonated with me too — what twenty-something in a committed relationship doesn’t have this weighing on her mind? So she gave it to me.

Hanging it felt like supporting an ally, even if it was only hanging in my dark, featureless space that nobody would see besides the boyfriend on weekends. Then one day some of his family made the trip for a visit. They complimented my hanging flower baskets, my thrifty decor. I didn’t hear until much later that the painting had become a topic of conversation among various relatives, a bit of a joke about that subject and, by extension in my mind, this girlfriend.

I had none of the inner fortitude to see this painting or my choices as acceptable and eventually I rolled it up and hid it in a closet. I married into that family within three years. The boxed wedding dress joined the poster tube containing the offending painting for two more moves until I finally ditched the artwork at the Sally Ann. The dress is another story.
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Detail from 'Unbridled,' the artist's handmade silk wedding dress embroidered with significant events. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
Picture'I Dissent,' aesthetic design with a political position marking the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Acrylic on panel, 2020 (Carlyn Yandle)
But I did keep something from that painting: some lessons that have informed an aesthetic that I carry to this day but might not even recognize until after each artwork is completed, or is at least on its trajectory.

The first is the power of attraction. Not to be confused with the pseudoscientific Law of Attraction, this is a drive to create aesthetically-pleasing, familiar domestic objects and fields that upon closer inspection have something else to say besides cozy or pretty. An early example of one of my pretty/pretty disturbing objects is Clutch (2007). Hundreds of sewing pins were pierced into a thrifted clutch purse in a colourful beaded pattern covering the entire surface. The clasp opens to reveal an impenetrable thicket of steely pointy ends.

Another valuable lesson is context, or time and place. Gallery-goers may prepare themselves to be confronted by artwork but I don’t wish that on houseguests. There are none of those Live-Love-Laugh type directives or IKEA Eiffel Towers and tulips on the walls at home, but what is there is selected to engage, not repel. Home is a place to feel safe. The studio is a place to not play it safe, but it’s still a covert operation, playing on that first impression of domestic objects that reveal cracks in the beauty of the everyday.

I’ve also learned that my creative energy comes from joy, not pain. I have no urge to make when I barely have enough hope for the day to put on pants. Heavy realities may be the driving force but the work develops from a position of hope for comfort and social connection, a hunger for nourishment of new ideas and new materials to explore. The joy is in learning while doing, imagining new collective futures.

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What first appears as a frilly white textile barely conceals the chaotic armature of conduit casing, hazard tape, metal pipes, and other construction-site debris behind layers of discarded Tyvek building wrap. (Nate Yandle photos)
Finally, my position is not fixed. In my mind I have that 1985 photo portrait of Lily Tomlin in a black T-shirt with white lettering that screams EVOLVE OR DIE. And look at her now. My sensibilities are always shifting and I am growing more at peace with the idea that what other people say about me is none of my business. When an artist friend turned 50 on an artists’ retreat the rest of us toasted her in a welcome to the I Don’t Give a Shit Club. When you’re part of that club you stop second-guessing every decision and tending to other people’s feelings first.

This is how I recently became the owner of Fuckwit. I was attracted by the sweet rosebud fabric appliqued in tiny blanket stitches precise as Letraset on a lacy linen. I like the artist's choice of font and word. It’s an overt, uncomplicated work that hangs near the front door, visible before guests would even have their coat off. If people get offended, blame the artist, not me. I just like the beauty in that crack.
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Original artwork by Kathryn Lissack (@kathrynlissack)

Epiphany: the studio is a workspace, not a salon

4/10/2015

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There was no getting around it -- literally. After a few weeks away from the studio I arrived viewing it with fresh yet loathsome eyes. There was no room to move here, let alone swing a cat. It suddenly dawned on me that the reason I bolted is I was enduring 'stuff-creep', working in little 12-inch-square surfaces and building nothing but resentment.

This is the typical love-hate relationship that makers have with the precious remaining studio spaces in a town transforming into a resort city of often-empty residential investment units. We have no choice but to think differently about how to make space to make, to reflect, to exchange ideas, to breathe.

A quick tour of the craigslist 'artists' category reveals how many locals are trying to hold onto their threatened studios.
One option is pack up everything and sublet it for part of the year to make enough coin to pay the always-increasing rents for the remaining months. Another is to sacrifice the space by subdividing it, or even share it in daily shifts by storing all work at the end of the day, like back in art school. Those of us who aren't (yet) willing to make that kind of sacrifice are constantly on the hunt to make the best use of the little space we have. This is how I've become addicted to garage storage porn.

Yes, while other people are checking their Facebook status or Instagramming or Angrybirding, I'm googling images of revamped New Jersey garages. My pulse races when I spot a particularly sexy idea that I can adapt for sorting paint, storing rolls of canvas or organizing all the found stuff essential to my sculptural work.
PictureMy uncle's workshop (Carlyn Yandle photo)
But while I was away I had an epiphany as I glimpsed into my very-skilled uncle's workshop. I've been doing it all wrong. I've been trying to contain and conceal my stuff when I should have been lining it all up to play.

I have been so bent on creating blank walls and empty surfaces by stowing my tools and materials in cubbies, under counters, in drawers and behind curtains that I didn't want the hassle of hauling it all out -- or putting it all back. The neatness has been paralyzing because just the thought of the clean-up is too high-maintenance. My thinking has been more salon than workshop. 

Now I see that seeing is everything and everything needs to be in its place but within eyesight and arm's length too. More like a working kitchen, or a ship's engineering room; less like an all-white micro-condo.

I am reminded of the old Gary Larson cartoon of the one rat saying to the other with hands on hips, "Crikey, it's supposed to look like a rat's nest."

***

Some working-studio ideas to steal, from one storage-porn addict to all the others out there:

PictureIkea knife magnets hold brushes so that they dry with the bristles down.
 

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Paint tubes hanging by bull clips. Why didn't I think of this?
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No more rummaging for tools hidden in boxes stored in cupboards
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Somewhere to put the ladder -- or rolls of canvas or paper
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Do-it-yourself idea for vertical deep storage of all those bins
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...and a way to get up to that storage: shelf stairs
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Fleeting acts of self-expression hold special power

8/1/2014

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PictureZen Garden, Buddhist Temple, Japan
The first time I saw a "dry landscape" Zen garden in one of the hundreds of temples in Kyoto, my brain sort of short-circuited.

This was the mid-'80s, and here was a Zen Buddhist priest meticulously raking the gravel against a lurid neon backdrop of sudden affluence and an alarming amount of consumer waste, often un-used and in its original packaging.

Now, of course, we get it. We have been seduced by the easy acquisition of stuff, then oppressed by all our stuff as the economy contracted (and nearly collapsed in the U.S.) We realized the two-car-garage life was not for us and now we spend a lot of time and angst trying to figure out how to part with our stuff.  We have been hoodwinked by marketers who prey on and play up our inadequacies, even inventing a highly lucrative shopping 'holiday', Cyber-Monday.

PictureLeah Biggs photo
There's an entire genre of art that reflects our dis-ease with all the stuff (see 10 visuals here) and painters have had to re-think their practice (of eking out a living) now that 'original' oil paintings sell at Winner's for $39.99, straight from Dafen Village, China.

What is emerging is a conversation about what really matters, which inevitably concludes with 'experiences.' It would be nice to think this shared revelation is rooted in our own free will, but really, the marketers have shot themselves in the collective foot. A rampant, speculative real estate

PictureBeck's fleeting design at a French ski resort uses snowshoes and clotheslines.
market has forced mortgage-choked folks into smaller quarters where there is just no room for more stuff. Car-ownership is being increasingly seen as a hangover from another marketing era and self-expression is no longer synonymous with the home-decor category.  Expression is becoming a participatory practice, enhanced by that one burgeoning consumption category — the ubiquitous personal screen and all its accompanying non-object data packages, games and apps. Mobility-marketing promotes an era of impermanence. Photos are as fleeting as the gravel-raking or the daily rice-flower Kolam drawings of South Indian women (see video, at bottom) or the snowshoe-patterns created by Englishman Simon Beck (left).

PictureCarlyn Yandle photo
Retail therapy is slowly being replaced by escape therapy. We balance rocks and create Calder-esque mobiles of driftwood. We take pictures, we post them on our blogs. We have amassed nothing but memories of that mindful, meditative moment of exploring the surface and mass of natural objects. We share them and are inspired by others' sharing.

Priceless.







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Words are not enough to capture the seduction of distraction

6/6/2014

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PictureDistracts #1, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.
To me, the easiest part about carving out a place in the visual arts world is writing something about it. Yet most of my artist colleagues don't know how I make myself do it on a weekly basis. Easy. It only took 20 years of deadline writing for newspapers.

'Easiest' isn't quite the right word; it's more like 'reliable.' I can rely on the fact that if I sit down at a blank screen, soon words will link into sentences, inspired and connected by images. It's really just a habit at this point. If I don't get the chance to try to make literal sense of the past week, things start to swirl up into a ball of confusion. But once it's out there, it's done and I can move on. 

PictureDistracts #2, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.
If only my days at my shared studio were as reliable. I wish I could start the morning with the same confidence as I stare at the freshly gesso'd blank canvas, and have the same conversation I get from writing a column (okay, blog). The two sides of my brain do not dance together at the studio. I do not enjoy the small eureka moments of understanding, or any great leaps forward in concept. And unlike weekly writing, I can't see that I'm creating any history of my process/progress. 

PictureDistracts #3, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.
Some days I feel like I'm just painting myself into corners, or cycling back to where I started months ago. I often need to call in the reinforcements — artist friends — for a studio visit, when I ask, "Am I flat-lining here?" or "Am I a one-trick pony?"

But words work for me. Letters soon coalesce into strands of ideas and at the moment of this writing I see one taking shape as I type, and drop in these images of my latest paintings. 



PictureDistracts #4, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 33"W x 27"H.
This much I know is true: This is the most distractive time in human history and I live in a neighbourhood that is arguably the nation's capital of everything yoga. As I ride to the studio, I'm generally pre-occupied with this idea of the swelling dedication to personal, meditative practice juxtaposed with the seduction of our screens and the growing realization that our personal identities can be stolen in a click of a button.

PictureDistracts #5, 2014, acrylic on panel, 14"W x 16"H.
 I think about  how we crave peace of mind and heart but are captivated by the fantastic and unfathomable, packaged in high-def or in 3-D, with same-day shipping, something to Like, Share, Tweet, and post to Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest.

Some days at the studio I just need to retreat, retrace past meditative practices, like lace-making. Other days I need to represent the fracturing of that focus.

If painting really is a conversation the painter has with the materials, surface, technique and image, I'm seeing that this is talking about mapping out an understanding of the here and now, where words fail.

PictureDistracts #6, 2014, acrylic on panel, 16"W x 20"H.
It's somewhere in the uneasy spaces between the digital and the handmade, the personal craft expression and the art and decor industry.

Put into words, it's a little terrifying to be in unexplored territory with no obvious path ahead.

I'm just bush-wacking, looking for a clearing. 

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QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

3/21/2014

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After three months of sewing one donated button after another into a giant QR code, the big moment arrived this week: time to stand back and scan that baby with a reader app, translating this quilt-thing to read, "The devil is in the details."

Except it didn't read. Don't panic!, I thought, then spent the entire next day working with a photo image of the QR Button Blanket, Photoshopping in more buttons and darker buttons and bigger buttons, trying to add the minimum amount of density for the software program to register the pattern and work its magic to produce the punchline. No luck; even a sliver of white in one button cluster puts a wrench in the wholecloth works. I filed this one under the category of Epic Fail, not worth finishing it as intended, framing it in black bias binding. I do not want to create something that is 'still' good; I want the thing to be good, full stop.

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Failure demands confronting the why. Why conceive such a laborious, risky project in the first place?  Why endure the painstaking process when half-way through it was becoming abundantly clear that this was not going to 'read'?

But there is another power here, and that's tied to the process beyond the product. The achievement may lie in the endurance (in an increasingly A.D.D. world) that is not necessarily attached to the product after all. It may be in seeing it through, without the promise of a sure result. The power may lie in the humble, everyday materials and the community of women who contributed all those bits of plastic saved from the waste stream. (There should really be a global ban on production of billions of plastic buttons. Plant-based plastic, bone, wood, and leather- or fabric-wrapped tin buttons eventually return to the earth.)

But what's really starting to click in for me is the cultural reference of this button-grid design. A decade ago, it might have been viewed as an oddly arranged colour field or an abstracted grid but we're so acclimatized to codes that the pattern begs to be 'read.' The fact that this is irresolvable might be annoying. And that's interesting. 

PictureWavy Gravy, marker on synthetic velvet, 58" x 43"
The possible multiple references could be more engaging than the one answer provided by a QR reader app. There's something to be learned in the discomfort of the open-endedness.

Moments like these, I seek out the artists who have embraced what New York artist Polly Apfelbaum calls the 'tough beauty' of visually exciting works that incorporate everyday materials in surprising ways. Apfelbaum, who calls herself a bad crafter, articulates the process of hard work in this video. 

"I work all the time," she says, without a schedule and in a highly experimental way. "You make the work and then you hope for the best." 

 "It's very important to get your fuck-you back."

I'm going with that.

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procraftination spikes when math hits

1/24/2014

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I was told there would be no math.

Turns out there’s nothing but math in making things, and all kinds of math in packaging it all up for clients and justifying it all to Revenue Canada.

I love to build stuff but I am not wired to readily tackle building an Excel spreadsheet, or at least I tend to steer clear of that sort of construction for fear of stirring the ugly, frustrated beast within. So instead of getting myself educated — knowledge is power yada yada — I go into serious procraftination mode. Need a project budget by Monday? Who wants a pair of knitted slippers!

Excel what now? 
The only thing I excel in when faced with spreadsheets and cost projections is making busy-busy with the hands, anxiety being the main fuel source for my handwork. I might even chart my productivity during tax time, if I could only drag my eyes away from my latest DIY obsession.

‘But it’s so simple. You don’t even have to do math.’ 
Can’t talk; making household cleaner out of orange peels.
‘There are lots of marketing courses for artists.’
Orrrr… a jewelry-making course, to make tiny silver sculptures! Sign me up.

I am aware that there are marketing resources and income tax tips just for visual artists but my feeble research into online tutorials and tips is quickly sidetracked:
Picture'Gridus' served up by a Moscow-based design studio. (artlebedev.com)
In my defence, it’s better not to try to grapple with the month-end reconciliation reports and annual income projections, because even I don’t have to do the math to know that the numbers are bad. What other kind of a business model has galleries demanding artists pay a submission fee (typically $35-50) just to send images of their work, then, if accepted, exhibit fees to show the work that the artists pay to ship to and from the gallery, with a commission to the gallery if the work is sold? That's before any travel expenses to actually attend the gallery opening. Any accountant would advise switching occupations.

You don't have to crunch those figures to understand that unless you've got a highly marketable 'product', this is no way to make a living.

The fact is, artists are easy-picking. We will do what we must  for free, even paying to get it out there to be part of the dialogue.  We may not make it as models in business, but at least we're making.


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The most powerful art might be made of garbage

11/22/2013

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PictureCarlyn Yandle photo
The astronomical private art-investor feeding frenzy at prestigious auction houses is light years away from art. It's a greedy need for prestige, worlds apart from the hand of Picasso or Andy Warhol and, most recently, Francis Bacon and the other Important Artists who conceived those coveted works.

Art is outside the billions of dollars sloshing around the world's art investors; it's in the streets, provoking those who hold the purse strings and the power. You can see it in humble objects, like the garbage monster that prowled around the anti-pipeline rally last weekend at the end of False Creek, towering over the thick crowd, snapping its messy maw at excited kids.  It's not pretty, and it certainly has no retail value, as it's made of the usual stuff that ends up in the Pacific Gyre, but it functions as art has and always will. It provokes us to think differently, to re-consider, step out of our complacency and see the world for what it is and where it is headed or could be. This is the power of the visual object.

The makers (presumably the two operators) of the garbage monster were compelled to express themselves through their creativity and labour, with no profit or prestige motives in mind. The object serves to contest the ways and means and plans of those in power, in this place, at a time when the news broke that Canada is dead last in climate change policy in the developed world. It may be a small gesture, but when combined with other creative forms of expression, can turn the tide.

PictureCarlyn Yandle photo
The prevailing discourse was there in the form of an image-object of an actual SUV receiving a giant lethal injection, during  Car-free Day on Commercial Drive this past June. The only motive behind this gesture was a need to comment. The high visual impact is art in its purest form and the makers are indisputably artists. And those artists are probably not getting rich if they're spending much of their creative effort on an expression outside of the system of capitalism. 

That pretty much has been the history of artists. Their work may have no cash value, but their value to society is priceless.

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Keeping Our Eyes on our work while cranes Swing overhead

8/29/2013

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They say some of the happiest people in the world live in the most precarious of circumstances. One theory says the self-reported happiness of these people is related to the fact that they live in the moment because a shaky future is too much to bear. 

This is how I feel about my studio. Content, fortunate — for the time being. I suffer from no desire to change up the configuration or make improvements. I don't even concern myself with the mouldering drywall or occasional mouse-sighting because I know that this could all be gone in a month's notice. The forest of cranes surrounding my studio neighbourhood of East 2nd Avenue and Main are a constant reminder of that. 
PictureThe skyline looking south up Main has changed dramatically since this photo was snapped in March.
It's all so precarious, I feel a small leap of joy every time I am not greeted by an eviction notice taped to my studio door. The inevitable redevelopment of the property that my squalid building sits on keeps me on my toes. 

There is no time to procrastinate at the studio; there is work to be done before the backhoe shows up and knocks down the cinderblock walls. And then where will I go? And what will become of my two artist studio-mates, the several ceramic artists in the three studios down the hall, the special effects guys who work in the film industry in two other studios, the musician and the fibre artist on either side of our shared space?

PictureVIVO Media Arts Centre GM Emma Hendrix, with cranes looming. (Rafal Gerszak photo)
This is a topic to be avoided when I meet for coffee with artist friends from nearby buildings, who are also trying to carve out an art practice in a race against time and property speculation, in what is easily the most expensive city in Canada to rent work space. We are already cheek-to-jowl, many forced to share their own workspace in a sort of split shift, or subletting for a few months to ease the financial burden. 

Everyone has a story about someone who's moved to the Sunshine Coast or her basement or Toronto, or who's had to switch from sculpture to jewelry-making due to a lack of space. We try not to dwell on the fact that a long commute from our apartments to a studio is a deal-breaker for many of us who decided to buy art materials instead of a car. We stay in the moment, stay on the topic of the work at hand, but even if we keep our head down, refrain from looking skyward, there are constant reminders. A Globe & Mail story this week by venerable reporter Frances Bula states that the VIVO Media Arts Centre property has been sold and it has to be out by May, after 20 years helping local artists and activists create video and music. We know that with every bit of news about high-clout galleries relocating next door, more controversy over highrise development, our days are numbered. 

PictureIn this corner: Happy to have space to crochet on a grand scale.
We are happy. For the moment.

PictureOn the other side of the studio: Space for large ink-on-paper play.
   

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Out of catastrophe comes creative thinking

7/12/2013

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PicturePretty, and pretty alarming stripes show future water levels.
All the recent natural and unnatural disasters in this country -- city-paralyzing changing-climate-induced floods in Calgary and then Toronto, an oil-tanker train disaster that derailed an entire Quebec town —  has left a lot of us here on the West Coast uneasy.

There’s an eerie calm here, a feeling like we may be next, despite the interception of a Canada Day plot of lethal destruction in our provincial capital. The regular warnings about the impending Big One is unnerving; even a walk on the seawall is a reminder that this will all be underwater, thanks to the 2012 CIty of Vancouver-commissioned public artwork by Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky. The deceptively attractive blue stripes on the Cambie bridge pilings that is A False Creek serve as a shocking visual of what scientists are saying is the inevitable rise in sea levels due to global warming. We live in a safe corner of the world, but now we're more likely to include the word 'still' in that statement.

PictureAlaskan Tentlady's selfie
I get that it's important for art to alert the general public about the coming doom, but my kneejerk reaction is to shift my creative energy into survivalist mode. I seek out the handmakers and the innovators who are making plans for the worst and seeking out ways to move forward. It distracts me from thinking about my mother watching her near-sea-level living-room wash away in a storm.

I seek and find them on places like treehugger.com and instructables.com, where Wasillia, Alaska handygal Alaskan Tentlady (real name not posted) shares her step-by-step directions for making a Gertee (Mongolian for 'relaxing at home', as it turns out), a hand-built portable home for cold weather, made out of recycled materials. (Lately she's been working on adapting this ancient and universally-used dwelling to house homeless teenagers in her region.)

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Utility is a great foil for futility and this keeps bringing me back to tracking these innovators' creative process. Their models are little labours of love made when their design was still in the dream phase, like Alaska TentLady's 1:12 scale model of her alternative-dream home.

Vancouver Islanders Gord and Ann Baird also share their model of a cob house and living roof in their ultra-green cob house (below) at their blog that defies living with a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. The maquettes are exquisite sculptural works in themselves, made of pure heart, with no irony aftertaste.

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Some high-end gallery curator should hunt down all the mini alternate-dream homes that their makers so generously share with the online world and put on one kick-ass show of hope.

Imagine the opening night: the cross-pollination of ideas and process, all these non-conformists who might balk at the label of artist collaborating with other likeminded people who are not simply awaiting the apocalypse but picturing the possibilities.




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A childhood of risky business inspires

7/5/2013

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My nephew is about to launch. Freshly freed from high school, he'll soon be flying high at the National Circus School in Montreal.

If there is one kid who would run away and join the circus, Domenic is it. Long before he pushed the physical limits of the human vessel, long before there were even any apparent muscles on his skinny little frame, he was destined for something different. His mind has always been a playground, his outlook wide-eyed and sunny. From him I’ve learned that play is not just fun but work, and that devotional practice comes in many forms.

He has easily devoted what Malcolm Gladwell has suggested is the 10,000 hours it takes to master a skill, and his motivation comes from his own wonderment. He spent his childhood wondering how high and how long and playing with the limits of muscle and bone. He can't wait to carry on the body experiment among others in the same pursuit from around the world.

“Experimenting with your own life is the most fundamental medium we have,” says scientist/environmental artist Natalie Jeremijenko, whose ‘design systems’ include the Mussel Choir: sensors connected to bivalves that can inform humans of the health of the East River through sound. 

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Jeremijenko on her 'wing swing'. Image from New York TImes Magazine
This is why I'm compelled at this time of year to grab random high school graduates by the arm and say: Go away! Go see the rest of the world! This is not everything! Things are not everything! Don't let comfort hold you back!

“Inconvenience yourself” is the prevailing take-away in The Blue Zone, Dan Buettner’s book of studies in longevity throughout the world, and it’s a good first step toward getting out of emotional and physical ruts and jump-starting experimentation. Bus instead of car. Paddle instead of cruise. Make instead of buy. Outdoors instead of indoors. All these little decisions of inconvenience, these tiny risks to our comfort, lead to new paths and new outlooks. (One routine-breaking idea: taking in one of the free nightly Bollywood, Bhangra and hip-hop yoga classes or the Indian Summer in the Park as part of the Indian Summer Festival of Arts, Ideas & Diversity, on now through July 13 in downtown Vancouver. See promo video below).

I think about the many, small social and physical tests my amazing nephew took on that brought him to where he is now: fierce, if a little afraid — just where he likes to be.

I am inspired.
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