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Free store in Vancouver — finally!

7/19/2013

Image found at vancouverisawesome.com

I've been thinking for a long time that Vancouver needs a Free Store, just like the most popular 'retail' store on the Gulf Island of Lasqueti. And now there it is, inside the old vault of a former dim sum warehouse in the 800 block of East Hastings.

The East Van Free Store is a community/art project hosted by the Red Gate Collective, with the whole point being actual social engagement (as opposed to virtual a la craigslist) and it's getting some media attention (CBC radio interview with Collective member Julia here).

Score! Felt pens and new Moleskin.

It's also about to get more public attention after its imminent relocation to the storefront of this studio and performance space. At the time of this writing the old safe room is open Tuesdays from 4-10 pm but I think this thing could take off due to popular demand. I dream of a chain of Free Stores, with the City offering grants to manage them, as a way to reduce landfill — that is, if the giant thrift store chain eight blocks east doesn't start squawking about unfair market advantage.

Because really, it's hard to go into retail battle with a free store, a potential paradise for everyone from hoarders who will find no barriers to bingeing on stuff to minimalists who need to purge to feel normal, and everyone in between — including makers in need of raw materials.

Lasquetians have been enjoying the social hub that is the purpose-built Free Store (and recycling depot) for many years. It's almost impossible to not stop by, for the conversation and the conversation pieces often donated anonymously. The social engagement mostly happens on the sheltered porch lined with shelves full of books and whatnots as the clothing part of the store is only open two days a week.

A few gems — the truly useless, confounding items — make the Free Store Gallery, an educational/art feature of the islanders' community website.

This is where keen-eyed local photographer Kristen Charleton posts her images of Free Store junk (her portrait of a donated rusty tin can of utensils is below) in a sort of lighthearted shame-the-dumper-donor series, evidence that even the truly undesirable has value.

I've long relied on the Lasqueti Island Free Store as an important supply of raw materials for various projects.
A sampling of works made to comfort and discomfort:

Free Store Flannel Quilt, 2003. Found cotton flannel shirts, fabrics.

Rag rug, 2005. Found cotton fabrics, 40"W x 72"L

Detail of 'Work II", 2010. Flannel work shirts on burlap, 32"W x 32"H

Seismic Rug, 2011. Found mixed-fibre fabrics. 60" diameter.

Ravages, 2013. Hand-made cotton doilies and mortar, approx. 18"

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Out of catastrophe comes creative thinking

7/12/2013

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Pretty, 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.

Alaskan 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.)

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.

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.

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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Free store in Vancouver — finally!

Out of catastrophe comes creative thinking

A childhood of risky business inspires

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