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deadhead alive with ideas of our watery past, uncertain future

6/27/2014

Like moths to a light, paddleboarders hover around Deadhead. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

On one rambling two-hour bike tour of False Creek Sunday, a friend and I cruised by the Dragonboat festival, the jazz festival and the food truck festival. Granville Island was foody festive. Kits Beach was body-festive. When everything is awesome we found some visual relief in the form of Deadhead, a chaotic sort of pirate ship/treehouse combo straight out of Waterworld.

Except this floating sculpture is not a big-budget flop. In fact, this curious floating object that is currently moored at the Heritage Marina in front of the Vancouver Maritime Museum makes use of wood salvaged by Cedric Bomford, with his retired engineer father Jim Bomford and artist brother Nathan Bomford.

Deadwood under construction. Photo: Maritime Museum

Deadhead is anti-slick, a welcome switch from the Disney and Celebrity Cruise floating cities that are part of the local summer scene.
The mash-up of spiral stairs, lookouts and ramps make this a magnet for curious kids, and a good introduction into what public art can look like.

An open house (or open barge) is slated for next Saturday (July 5), 2-5 p.m. with signal flag workshops running at 2, 2:30, 3, and 3:30 pm
Saturday July 5, in Heritage Harbour and at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, just off the south side of the Burrard Bridge — a good excuse to use the new bike lane).

More photos showing Deadwood in process here.

View from the crowsnest. (Photo from http://deadhead.othersights.ca/)

Just when I was sure every last skilled carpenter has been sucked up north to Kitimat, or further, to Fort McMoney, it's with some relief to see local builders constructing something for the purpose of art.

I love a sculpture that is both playful and foreboding. It speaks of the imagination of kids and the hands of skilled makers with means, but it also evokes our shared history of makeshift dwellings in the watery part of the world, and a climate-changed future we'd rather not imagine.

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Art walk a reason to browse South Granville again

6/20/2014

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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.

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Down on your drawing? break out at Vancouver Draw Down

6/13/2014

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Remember when you were a kid you knew you could give a drawing as a present to any adult and that adult would love it, even though you would definitely not like a drawing-present yourself?

It's one of those things that separates the kids from the adults. You know you're a fully formed adult when you understand that the piece of paper a kid hands up to you is not a cheap excuse for a real gift but carries the priceless traces of free-spirited play.

Consider this drawing of some figures in hats and gloves on a baseball diamond. The scribbles reveal that this five-year-old artist was fully engaged in the parameters of the game. But the happiness radiating from this drawing is not in the smiles on those figures' faces as in the engagement in the act of drawing. This is not a picture of felt pen marks on a piece of paper but a kid fully immersed in the idea, working out the positions, the scale, the action. He clearly started by filling the space with a diamond then plotting in his players, revising as he went, probably singing or making voices of the players as he drew.

Now consider this unhappy drawing of, ironically, a McHappy Meal. This was a still-life school assignment, not a whim. I laboured over every drop of condensation on the takeout cup. The fries resemble lumber. Every layer in the cheeseburger and crack in the bun is accounted for. This drawing reveals the opposite of the free hand; it is the hand imprisoned by adult expectations of what constitutes a proper Drawing.

Now sketching, I do that all the time, but that's just for figuring stuff out, just for me. Kind of like the baseball drawing.

Getting into or getting back into drawing for the fun of it is the whole point of the annual Vancouver Draw Down, culminating this Saturday all over town. This is not a competition, there are no grades; this is a chance to play with mark-making and be inspired by the creative ways drawing can happen. The fifth annual event takes its cue from the world's biggest drawing event, The Big Draw in the UK, part of the Campaign for Drawing, "a charity that raises the profile of drawing as a tool for thought, creativity, social, and cultural engagement," according to its website. (See YouTube video at bottom on why drawing matters.)

A few of the many ways to play Saturday, for all ages and experience, and with no registration required:

• Seabus Intervention (9 am - 5 pm): For the price of a ticket for the seabus, passengers are invited to use a Vancouver transit map to "create their own lines, routes and configurations."

• Costume Design Illustration (10 am - 2 pm): Head to the Arts Club Granville Island Stage rehearsal hall for a free four-hour session that explores illustration techniques, lead by pro costume designer Sheila White.

A detail from Marian Penner Bancroft's newly installed Boulevard.

• Time/Line Artstarts (10 am - 4 pm): Downtown at Artstarts Gallery ("the first in Canada devoted exclusively to young people's art") it's all about time-based collaborative drawing experiments.

• Boulevard Station, Yaletown-Roundhouse Station (noon - 4 pm): Trace the winter tree patterns of artist Marian Penner Bancroft's newly commissioned installation Boulevard and be a part of a collective drawing collage.

Download this file to print out a passport, get it stamped from at least two events, for chances at art-related prizes.

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Words are not enough to capture the seduction of distraction

6/6/2014

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Distracts #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.

Distracts #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.

Distracts #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 I can see one taking shape as I write, dropping in these images of my latest paintings.

Distracts #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 swell of interest in personal, meditative practice or escape juxtaposed with the seduction of our screens and the growing realization that our personal identities can be stolen in a click of a button.

Distracts #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, post to Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest.

Some days at the studio I just need to retreat, retrace the lace. Other days I need to feel 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 a kind of mapping out of an understanding of the here and now, where words fail.

Distracts #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 industry.

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

I'm just bush-wacking until I find a clearing.

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deadhead alive with ideas of our watery past, uncertain future

Art walk a reason to browse South Granville again

Down on your drawing? break out at Vancouver Draw Down

Words are not enough to capture the seduction of distraction

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