carlyn yandle
  • about
  • crafted objects
  • public art
  • painting
  • the creative process
  • exhibitions
  • contact

Urban design lesson for Vancouver: Life in full colour blooms in car-free streets

12/10/2016

Comments

 
Picture
The steps of the Teatro Juarez transform by day and night for the benefit of the walking public. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
A month after I landed in Guanajuato, Mexico it finally dawned on me: there are no traffic lights in this bustling city. You'd think that would be obvious from the outset but those kinds of details are not readily apparent when you're gawking at a guy hoofing it down the narrow city streets with a side of raw beef on his shoulders, or a teenage girl unfurling her frothy pink ballgown from a truck parked at the end of the pedestrian zone.
Not only are there no traffic lights, there are no pedestrian crossing signals or any restrictions on the walking public. The downtown is teeming with people but with such narrow, winding vehicle thoroughfares, topas (speed bumps) and gloriettas (large versions of Vancouver's "traffic-calming circles") you learn quickly to go with the slow flow. Pedestrians zig-zag with ease across streets, almost brushing the rear of a slow-passing car so the vehicle behind doesn't have to shift down to super-slow. This is not a town to venture into if you're a driver in a hurry. Cruising speed is such that you could start a conversation with people on the sidewalk. Road rage is inconceivable.

So how are all the goods and services delivered? Most of that happens under the plazas and winding streets in old floodwater-diverting tunnels. Parking lots are also mostly situated under or outside the city centre and on-street parking is a rarity. There are no filthy downtown back alleys dedicated to dumpsters and delivery trucks. No urban blight of parked cars flanking both sides of every street.
Picture
A narrow 'calle' is transformed into a weekend-long wine-tasting venue. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

As a result, the major calles (streets) are in constant transformation, a jumble of bakeries, cafes and newsstands in the morning, market stalls in the afternoon, and music-filled evenings and special events like a recent wine-tasting weekend along a red carpet through to the historical centre. The previous weekend saw a chalk-mural draw-in where local art students were down on their knees, working their ideas into the surface near that morning's bike race finish line.

These are the possibilities for streets where pedestrians come first.
Picture
Art students take to the (permanent) car-free streets. (Carlyn Yandle and photo)
Picture
Narrow spaces invite humane activity. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
Picture
Street musicians head down to the outdoor restaurants. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
I fail to see the downside in squeezing out cars in heavily populated areas. In contrast, pricey Vancouver's sketchy, rat-infested downtown alleys and acres of meter parking look like a colossal waste of potential commercial and cultural space. How impossible would it be to conceal dumpsters in locked building bays and restrict garbage pickup to, say, 2 a.m., and then entice tiendas (street vendors) and the mom-and-pop shops that have been all but banished to the fringes due to high rents?

The more I wander and wade through all this colourful human activity the more I resent the privileged position of the private motor vehicle in North American urban "planning." Cities in their relative infancy like Vancouver could learn a lot from organic urban centres like Guanajuato that came into their own before there were cars.

​My hometown is already teetering on the edge of becoming a boring luxury resort city; a bold directive towards people and away from the private motor vehicle could pull us back from that precipice.
Picture
A religious procession is part of the passing cultural parade. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
Picture
Vehicle thoroughfares and parking areas are mostly on the fringes and below the city. (Carlyn Yandle photo)
Comments

Public art tour by bike all part of the velorution

4/17/2015

Comments

 
There is a symbiotic relationship between art and cycling. For me, I don’t get to work/play in the studio if I don’t get on my bike, and I don’t get my daily dose of hard-pumping exercise if I don’t go to the studio.

My father, a career artist and devoted cyclist, has long believed a cure to what ills is Dr. Bicycle. I take that to mean not just physical aches and pains but creative lethargy. Any artist who rides will tell you that inspiration often hits while she’s flying on two wheels.
PictureThe June 2007 ride shut down Lion's Gate bridge for 30 minutes and the Stanley Park Causeway that leads to it for 60 minutes. (Tavis Ford photo)
Cycling as daily transportation is pretty much mainstream in Vancouver’s downtown core now, but it took a lot of persistence by non-conformists and idealists to get it that way.  The early Critical Mass rides through the city’s main thoroughfares on the last Friday of every month were composed of a motley crew of creative-thinkers. When that critical mass of riders was reached, the infrastructure followed, thanks to a progressive city planning department and pedal-power-driven community leaders like Mayor Gregor Robertson, Gordon Price and Peter Ladner.

The bike has been my main mode for most of my life but I still feel like I'm playing a bit of Russian roulette every time I head out, even though negotiating city streets isn’t the life-risk it used to be. It’s mighty fine seeing old folks and tykes on bikes but you know there’s been a real sea change when you see guys in their 20s and 30s cruising the city on two wheels -- or maybe that’s all due to the new craft beer joints and weed stores. Drunk and stoned cyclists in traffic: not cool.



Picture
Meanwhile, there are still quite a few art-loving folks in my world who only rarely, if ever, take to the bike paths but if there's ever a time, this is the season for it, and this weekend is the perfect time for some pedal-play.

May I suggest this art-cycling combo: the self-guided bike tour of some of the city’s temporary public artworks on display for the Vancouver Biennale. (Map and key at right.) 

PictureVancouver artist Marcus Bowcott's Trans Am Totem
Not listed on this tour is one work that will have particular resonance to the bike-loving bunch: Trans Am Totem, by Vancouver artist Marcus Bowcott.

If the promise of fabulous spring weather this weekend won't tempt you, this call to action video will:


Comments

Inspiration from those who make it, through Crassmas

12/12/2014

Comments

 
It's not too late to say, Nay! I will not be coerced into this coming two-week commercial frenzy. I will steer my little ship into calmer waters! 

Instead of joining the throngs of harried consumers grabbing up plastic chocolate-pooping reindeer and ironic acrylic Christmas sweaters it's possible to turn all this Excessmas into Makemas — not to make gifts necessarily but just to make for the sake of it.
PictureEriksson's home-baked sculpture earns her a TV interview on God Morgen Norge.
Seasonal materials — gingerbread, sugar, snow and ice, fir boughs, candy, lights — get makers going. What starts with a simple plan to make, say, a gingerbread house, can develop into astonishing works.

Norwegian maker Caroline Eriksson took it to new heights last year when she devoted a week and a half of full-time making to compose this Optimus Prime (which really should have been called Insulin Prime). There are 700-800 pieces in this Pepperkokemann — which sounds really funny when you say it out loud. (via gizmodo) It's nerdy but there's something in all that cookie dough that evokes a delicious back story about a sweet gingerbread house that breaks out to lead the Autobot rebellion.

Picture
Jacking up this surrealist season is Toronto fashion shock-rockers Dean and Dan Caten(acci) of DSquared2, who created these spike-heel ice skates a couple of seasons back.

I remain captivated by this very-Canadian wearable sculpture that the makers had the nerve to put into a product line, further blurring the line between surrealism and consumption. The power it has to create so much scorn says something about a culture immersed in acquisition over contemplation of an object. Adding to the cultural weight of this object is in the potential for performance art by the user.

Picture
Austen, Texas artist Emily Blincoe packs a weighty punch into the empty calories of her Color Coded: Sugar Series.

A surprising recategorization of common objects or materials invites a re-think about those objects. A glut of candy organized by colour draws the viewer's attention into issues like marketing, excess, presentation. consumption and value. This fetishistic display of tooth-rotting, diabetic-seizure-inducing "food" endures as long as the no-expiration dates.

But when it's all too much (as Glaswegian Granny used to declare, on surveying the freshly unwrapped loot), we makers head for the woods. Or the beach — anywhere you won't hear the Chipmunks or Michael Buble or Mariah Carey droning seasonal mall music.

PictureA snowball installation speaks the language of textile art. (from cecageorgieva.blogspot.ca)
Making is also meditative.

Textile artist Ceca Georgieva, of Sophia, Bulgaria, works in the natural world, creating time-intensive land art pieces. This snowball installation exudes quietude and fragility, created through a repetitive process that evokes the kind of attention and meditation involved in textile art.


The impermanence of the piece, the precarious balance makes it an intriguing moment in time. Soon it will all blow over and we can start anew.


Comments

Packing it all in for the Toronto design fest

12/5/2014

Comments

 
It's getting close to a decade since I packed it all in: my needles and wool, my sewing machine and fabrics, my mid-level-management career. There was more to explore.

I've been mixing it up with a wide range of materials (and makers) ever since but even I'm surprised to find that my latest tools of choice for bushwacking new routes of making are the ol' crochet hooks, knitting needles, rug hooks and embroidery needles.

The line on the paper has always been too limiting to me; I need to pick up that line, play with it in my hands, turn it into area, then volume. I remain entranced by the possibilities of connecting something created by a silkworm or an industrial manufacturing plant to a mathematical model or a wearable with uncomfortable connotations.

The beauty of fiber is in its physical and metaphorical ability to connect the Art side to the Design side (not to mention the science side), weaving the two together until it's clear that playing with ideas cannot be put into separate boxes.
Picture'Spore' (2011) serves as promo visual for the Vancouver design group.
Except if we're talking shipping boxes, for the Toronto Design Offsite (TO DO) Festival next month.

A few object-experiments from my ongoing Fuzzy Logic series will be packed in there, as part of the Vancouver group of makers, selected by the Dear Human creative studio.

It's all part of the ‘Outside the Box’ exhibits featuring works from three selected Canadian cities — Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver — and five from the U.S.: New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.

It's a fine way to mine local design ideas and visions through an unexpected selection of objects that are shared in various locations via specific-sized shipping boxes.

The Vancouver contribution includes nine individuals and teams who live, design and make in the greater Vancouver area. The connecting thread is a pursuit of a design practice through material exploration, according to Dear Human. "Whether through common applications of unusual materials or transcending common materials through unusual applications, exploration is evident in each of the included objects." 

Rounding out the Vancouver Outside the Box contingent are: Cathy Terepocki, Dahlhaus, Dina Gonzalez Mascaro, Hinterland Designs, Laura McKibbon, Rachael Ashe, and Studio Bup.

PicturePlaying with fiber optics (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)
Vancouver Outside the Box will take over the windows at 1082 Queen Street West, Toronto, from January 19-25, 2015.

TO DO is an annual city-wide not-for-profit week-long festival that celebrates and showcases the nation's design scene, providing exposure and cross-pollination of ideas and techniques. There are too many exhibits, installations, talks, parties and films to list here, so check out the full (and growing) schedule here as well as the fun promo video.

PictureDetail of Fiber Optics (Photo by Carlyn Yandle)




Comments

Is Instagram a godsend for artists, a social drug, or worse?

11/14/2014

Comments

 
I've been giving Instagram a lot of thought. And I've concluded that I'm exhausted.
Picture(Photo by Carlyn Yandle)
I realize that Instagam can turn a small-town lady with a crafty idea into an international business success story, but that's quickly eclipsed by thoughts of more insidious, multinational business antics: top-level consumer marketers who court those Grammars' "Insta-fluence": Nike, Holiday Inn, Burberry. (More at this New York Times article.)

I think about how encouraging it is to have people following you in your creative endeavours, but then I think about the shared similarities among the top social-media savvy "micro-celebrities", our exploding narcissistic culture and the easy-pickins' exploitation for big-brand profit and almost-free fame.

I realize that Instagram can open a door for artists to the big wide sharing world and that by refusing to open that door runs the risk of a lifetime of professional obscurity. Indeed, "Instagram is custom made for the art world," says New York Observer opinion-writer/billionaire financier/art collector Adam Lindemann. But he then adds: "You get a quick flash of an image with virtually no text or explanation. There’s no need to read. It’s perfect for people with zero attention span, zero education and zero interest in learning about anything—perfect, in other words, for the art collectors of today. You could go so far as to say that the successful art of this current generation must be Instagramable to succeed, and if it doesn’t look good on Instagram, it ain’t working in this instant-gratification art world: goldfish have longer attention spans than ‘grammers."

Picture(Photo by Ariel Zambelich/WIRED)
I  realize that it's free and with the help of such apps as Latergram, it's possible to keep the phone-pecking at a daily minimum, but I can't help thinking about these guys: the Instagram and Facebook engineers who recently moved all Instagram photos to Facebook's data centre, without any users the wiser, as reported by Wired. 

I realize that this is a wee worried whisper in the hell-yeah storm of 200 million mostly female, mostly under-35 Instagrammers.  And I realize that I may be overthinking the whole thing. I could be expanding my visual horizons, connecting with artists around the world, but instead I'm fixated on what becomes of the millions of bits of personal information being sucked into that data centre in Forest City, North Carolina (as suggested in the Wired article) every day, and how that data has been used and how it will be, soon enough.

PictureA slideshow still from How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet (wired.com)
Last year the FBI and the National Security Agency were handed over the ability to suck up people's photos, videos, emails and documents, after the largest businesses online allowed the agencies access to their servers. According to a ground-shaking Washington Post article last year, "The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden."

I think about Instagram and I think about what's monitored, what's censored (no pubes!), what's the next app to eclipse Instagram's success (Snapchat or Bolt?).  I think about how all these social media apps contribute to the time-sucking attention to that little gadget that is now as much a part of the restaurant table as the cutlery and that has turned a busload of riders into something resembling group prayer. I think about how Rogers is a dealer, getting rich on its users' increasing dependency on data, more data.

Am I overthinking Instagram and the rest of the global social re-wiring? Yes, but I might not be thinking about it enough either.

Comments

Next stop on writers' blog tour is this space

9/26/2014

Comments

 
PictureArleigh Wood
A few weeks back, Vancouver artist-blogger Arleigh Wood asked me if I would be willing to catch the baton on an ongoing, international writers' blog tour. I'm bullish on all collaborative, non-monetizing projects involving social media so I agreed to devote one column to answering the four questions, then passing the baton myself.

Dispensing with the urge to apologize for making this all about My Process, here goes:

What are you working on?

I’ve just finished up a public artwork in Richmond, and finished writing about it, too, so I’m looking forward to re-joining the world beyond this all-consuming project. On my good days I see this as the ‘fallow’ period, when I can absorb, research, reflect, rest and socialize. Other days I see this as my ‘unemployed’ period. What I’m really working on is this idea that ‘working’ is not synonymous with ‘getting paid.’ The weekly blog — I still call this thing a column — provides structure and requires that I get out there and get informed and involved. My journalism career conditioned me to write, on deadline, and regularly. Now it’s become an unconditional part of my creative process.

Why do you do what you do?

A couple of days ago I heard a radio interview in which the guest musician said something to the effect of: “Artists can’t help themselves. They do what they have to do.” I relate to that strongly. I will do just the bare minimum of cooking, cleaning, visiting, caretaking, or travelling to buy myself more time to make. I was the kid in the classroom whose only question about the in-class assignment was, “After we do this can we go to the arts and crafts corner?” The leopard really does not change its spots.

How does your creative process work?

I used to write for a living, then make on my off hours, which sustained me for many years but at some point I knew that when it was financially possible I would have to flip the priorities. I loved the community-building that happens through reporting and writing but I was so creatively spent at the end of the day the best I could do was follow directions by Martha Stewart. I started resenting the fact that I was basically selling all my creative energy. Now I make first, write later. I still need the writing, though, because it leads to more making. That really begins with a compulsion, a need to quell my anxiety. Repetitive, often laborious work is a kind of meditation. With my muscles and motor skills engaged in a pattern of movement or a set of gestures, my brain is free to roam. Often I don’t know at the onset what I’m making but it reveals itself, the way fiction writers often talk about how they will introduce a character then watch that character develop. My making opens up possibilities for new explorations and ideas.

What makes your work/blog unique?
PictureCharting the blogoshphere (from datamining.typepad.com)
I have trouble with the concept of uniqueness. I see my work as a small act of participation indicative of our unique social species, one buzzy speck in the hive. I blog to take full advantage of the free opportunity (for now) to participate in the larger conversation, by sharing visually and through the written word. I am not driven by a need to amass followers or accumulate hits but more by a compulsion to create a personal record of developing creative process and culture. It may just dissolve into the ether, or maybe it will be added to the social record but at least no trees were sacrificed in the process.

Picture
Who would you like to pass the blogging baton to?

Leanne Prain is another Vancouver-based maker/writer combo and the author of the newly published Strange Material: Storytelling Through Textiles; Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti (co-authored with Mandy Moore) and Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery. She blogs about crafts (especially textiles) and the people who make them, design, art, urbanism, publishing, and her writing life. She also does public speaking and leads workshops. 

Meet Ms. Prain in person at
 Hot Wet Art City gallery on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m. when she and fellow authors Betsy Greer and Kim Piper Werker tackle “The Intersection of Craft, Creativity, & Activism.”

Linking over to you, Leanne.

Comments

Fleeting acts of self-expression hold special power

8/1/2014

Comments

 
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.







Comments

The pretty and the pretty awful make it into Eastside murals

4/11/2014

Comments

 
PictureUrban Crow (detail), by Richard Tetrault




I have this vague, hippie-era-soaked memory
of my brother and I hanging with my father as he painted a wall alongside some other artists. Forty years later I suggested to my brother that he swing by my own mural project last summer, reminding him of those times when we were to come see the art in the making.

There's a humble history of mural-making in East Vancouver, but well-known Strathcona-based artist Richard Tetrault has taken it to new heights. Speaking in Vancouver and Richmond this week, his survey of his large-scale, collaborative, very public paintings emphasizes place and history.

His work is about layers: the often conflicting layers of histories of Vancouver's distinct communities and the layers of translucent colour that identify his painting style.

PictureIconic hydro poles and back lanes, Urban Crow (detail)
The very-Vancouver images of construction cranes, crows, and hydro wires take on symbolic meaning in his murals. But behind the expansive visuals on the sides of buildings or retaining walls is a whole other skill area: working with Eastside communities to create the content that is often contentious but necessary, he says, in moving forward. So, residential schools and the 'bad' Balmoral hotel sign are depicted, often despite some objections by those who are haunted by them, but in a way that acknowledges their impact without further torment. 

Then there is the challenge of the logistics of securing funding and handling swing stages and working while exposed to the elements. These are skills that only develop from a lifetime of experience in public mural-making, and are invisible in his slideshow of works that show, say, collaborating members of the Chinese, First Nations, and Japanese community represented in the Radius mural at the Firehall Theatre in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (below).

PictureThe Radius mural in progress at the Firehall Theatre.
Some of that background can be seen in the short film (see YouTube clip, below) about the immense Through the Eye of the Raven collaborative mural on the Orwell Hotel.

Tetrault is heavily influenced by his own early-adult years in Mexico, absorbing the social art murals by the likes of the big three — Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros — whose large-scale public artworks were created to speak to a largely illiterate indigenous population.

PictureSiqueiros' Revolutionaries (detail), 1957-65
What makes a good/important contemporary mural remains the subject of great debate, making this public artform fraught with issues. 

Is a mural without a message — such as to remember a history of struggle, to give rights or hope to the wronged, to call to action — mere decoration? Is colour, beauty and skill worthy enough of public funding? What are the parameters for officially sanctioning one kind of expression over another? Should the public have input into what is being funded?


PictureOne Terrace local shares his views on the Enbridge campaign. Photo by Josh Massey
Unauthorized murals — also known as graffiti — are fleeting but can also pack a punch, as famously seen in Bansky's surreptitiously created scenes.

It can be seen in the work of my cousin in Terrace BC. (name withheld) for his anti-Enbridge art on the public property of the old Skeena Bridge and possibly painted out by now. For the people, by the people. 



***
Richard Tetrault's murals can be seen in the flesh with the help of the interactive maps in this self-guided Eastside Mural Tour.

Comments

Granville Island needs an injection of innovation

3/7/2014

Comments

 
PicturePhoto 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.

PictureIntriguing 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. 

PictureToronto'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.) 

Comments

Some powerful signs at Sochi

2/14/2014

Comments

 
PictureAlex Livesey/Getty Images
The signs, they are a-changing.

But to see them you have to look past the visual bombardment of dead-eyed-Kardashian-object images, pop-up balloon-boob ads, and the opening scenes of violence against women on CSI: Whatever.

The signs are there, at the current Olympics, on the helmet of  Calgary skeleton racer Sarah Reid, the fashion-baggy gear of female snowboarders, the bulk of the women's ice hockey team jerseys.

They read: Fierce, driven, focused, fearless.

For me, the Sochi Olympics has been a perfect study in semiotics (the study of signs). They're captivating in their  complete contradiction to the prevailing mass-media image of young women, and they point to an emerging, alternative 'system of signification,' as the academics might call it. Calgary-based Sarah Reid, 26, shows it in the haunting helmet she conceived with artist and goalie Jason Bartziokas (Alberta College of Art and Design grad '04).

PictureTeam Canada playing Finland at Sochi (Canadian Press photo)
The ice hockey team displays it in their uniforms and their team effort — so rarely seen in the culture of young adult women.

It took some hard lobbying on their part to get here on the ice or in the half-pipe, and it took a lawsuit win to  get them the chance to fly through the ski-jumping competitions. (International Olympics Committee members have a history of excluding women, notably because the sport may injure their reproductive organs.)

PictureGermany's Natalie Geisenberger steels herself in luge training at Sochi. (Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann)



PictureUS snowboarder Karly Shorr, risking her reproductive organs in the slopestyle qualifiers. (Reuters)
  

Although they're still banned from competing in a few Nordic Combined events, the women are alternative models to the Victoria's Secret variety for young girls. But we're not there yet. Not when there are only 24 women in the 110-member International Olympic Committee. (More neat stats here.) 

I keep these visual signs at hand, to show whenever one of the young girls in my life is confronted with another misogynist music video. See here? See how they run, ski, jump, spiral, play well together, delight in their own abilities?
Visual signs as new modes of thinking.
Comments
<<Previous

    RSS Feed

    browse by topic:

    All
    Abstract Painting
    Activism
    Additive
    Aesthetics
    AgentC Gallery
    Alison Woodward
    Aluminum
    Anxiety
    Appropriation
    Architecture
    Arleigh Wood
    Art
    Art Business
    Art Discourse
    Art History
    Artist
    Artist Residency
    Artist Statement
    Artist Talk
    Art Marketing
    Art Quilt
    Art School
    Art Show
    Art Spiegelman
    Assemblage
    Author
    Banksy
    Bauhaus
    Beauty
    Betsy Greer
    Big Data
    Billy Patko
    Blogs
    Blog Tour
    Bob Krieger
    Body Of Work
    Books
    Boro
    Braided Rug
    Braiding
    Bruce MacKinnon
    Bruce Mau
    Building
    Bull Kelp
    Business
    Buttons
    Carlyn Yandle
    Caroline Eriksson
    Cartoon
    Ceca Georgieva
    Challenge
    Children
    Christmas
    Cindy Sherman
    Cirque Du Soleil
    City As Site
    City Planning
    Cityspace Gallery
    Clay Yandle
    Climate Change
    Cluster
    Cob
    Cob Oven
    Collaboration
    Collage
    Colonialism
    Color
    Colour
    Commission
    Community
    Community Building
    Composition
    Conceptual Art
    Conceptual Craft
    Connie Sabo
    Construction
    Coronavirus
    Cover
    Cover-19
    Covid
    Craft
    Craft Blogs
    Craftivism
    Crafts
    Craftsmanship
    Creative Process
    Critique
    Crochet
    Cross-stitch
    Cultural Hub
    Cultural Studies
    Culture
    Culture Jamming
    Culturejammingc9d75664fd
    Current Conditions
    Cycling
    Dafen Village
    Dallas-duobaitis
    Dance
    Data-graphic
    Data-graphic
    Dear Human
    Deep Craft
    Denim
    Denyse Thomasos
    Design
    Discomforter
    Display
    Distraction
    Distracts
    DIY
    Doilies
    Doily
    Domestic
    Domestic Interventions
    Douglas-coupland
    Draw Down
    Drawing
    DSquared2
    Dude-chilling-park
    Dyeing
    Eastend
    Eastside Culture Crawl
    ECUAD
    ECUAD MFA
    Editorial
    Edward Burtynsky
    Eggbeater Creative
    Embellishment
    Embroidery
    Emily Blincoe
    Emily Carr Cozy
    Emily Carr University
    Environment
    Environmental Art
    Exhibit
    Exhibition
    Experimentation
    Exploration
    Expression
    Fabric
    Fabricating
    Facebook
    Failure
    Fashion
    Feminist
    Feminist Art
    Festival
    Fiber
    Fiber Artist
    Fiber Arts
    Fibre
    Fibre Arts
    Film
    First Saturday Open Studios
    Flo
    Flow
    Foraging
    Form
    Foundlings
    Found Materials
    Found Objects
    Fractal
    Free Store
    Fuzzy Logic
    Gallery
    Gallery-row
    Garden
    Garment
    Gentrification
    Gill Benzion
    Gingerbread
    Globalization
    Glue
    Grad 2020
    Graffiti
    Granny Square
    Granville-island
    Green Space
    Grid
    Guanajuato
    Guerrilla Art
    Guerrilla Girls
    Halloween
    Handmaking
    Hand Stitching
    Hand-stitching
    Handwork
    Hashtags
    Haywood Bandstand
    Healing
    Health
    Hearth
    Hideki-kuwajima
    Homelessness
    Hot Art Wet City
    Hybrid Thinking
    Ian Reid
    Ian Wallace
    Ideas
    Identity
    Images
    Incomplete Manifesto For Growth
    Industrial Design
    Industry
    Innovation
    Inspiration
    Instagram
    Installation
    Intervention
    Invention
    Irena Werning
    Janet Wang
    Jeans
    Jeff Wilson
    Joel Bakan
    Joseph Beuys
    Joseph-wu
    Journalism
    Joyful Making In Perilous Times
    Judith Scott
    Kim Piper Werker
    Kimsooja
    Knitting
    Knots
    Knotting
    Kyoto
    Labor
    Labour
    Landon Mackenzie
    Landscape
    Leanne Prain
    Lecture
    Lighthouse
    Liz Magor
    Log Cabin
    Logo Sweater
    LOoW
    Lost Painting
    Lumiere Festival
    Lynda Barry
    Macrame
    Maker
    Making
    Malcolm Gladwell
    Male Gaze
    Maquette
    Marie Kondo
    Marketing
    Mark Lewis
    Martha Rosler
    Masks
    Material Exploration
    Mathematics
    Maya
    Media
    Meditative
    Metalworker
    MFA
    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
    Online Talk
    Openings
    Organization
    Origami
    #overthinking
    Paint
    Painting
    Pandemic
    Paper
    Paper Sculpture
    Parkade Quilt
    Patriarchy
    Pattern
    Pechakucha
    Pecha Kucha
    Perception
    Performance
    Performance Art
    Photography
    Playing
    Political Art
    Polly-apfelbaum
    Pompidou
    Poodle
    Port Coquitlam
    Portrait
    Process
    Production
    Profession
    Project
    Protest
    Psychedelic
    Public Art
    Qr Code
    Quilt
    Quilt Block
    Quilting
    Rachael Ashe
    Rachel Lafo
    Ravages
    Raw Materials
    Rebar
    Recycle
    Research
    Residency
    Resurge
    Retreat
    Rhonda Weppler
    Richard-tetrault
    Richmond Art Gallery
    Right Brain
    Rondle-west
    Rug
    Ryan-mcelhinney
    Safe Supply
    Safety
    Sarah-gee-miller
    Sashiko
    Saskatchewan
    Scaffolds
    Scale
    Scraps
    Sculpture
    Seaweed
    Semiotics
    Sewing
    Sharon Kallis
    Shawn Hunt
    Shigeru Ban
    Sketchup
    Slow Craft
    Smocking
    Social Engagement
    Social-engagement
    Social History
    Social Justice
    Social Media
    Soft Sculpture
    South-granville
    Space Craft
    Spore
    Stitching
    Storage
    Street Art
    Studio
    Styrophobe
    Subversive Stitch
    Surrealism
    Surrey
    Tagging
    Talking Art
    Tapestry
    Tattoo
    Technology
    Terry Fox Theatre
    Text
    Textile
    Thrift Stores
    TJ Watt
    TO DO
    Tools
    Toronto Design Offsite
    Toybits
    Trash
    Trash Art
    Trevor Mahovsky
    Typography
    Tyvek
    Unbridled
    Unfixtures
    Upcycling
    Urban Design
    Use Object
    Use Objects
    Utility
    Vancouver
    Vancouver Art Gallery
    Vancouver International Airport
    Video
    Video Tour
    Visual Field
    Visual-field
    Visual Language
    Wallace Stegner House
    Wall Hanging
    Waterwork
    Weaving
    William Morris
    Wood
    Wool
    Work Wraps
    Wrap I
    Wrap II
    Writing
    Yarn Bombing
    YVR
    Zaha Hadid
    Zendoodle
    Zero Waste Art
    Zero-waste Art

    Archives

    August 2022
    June 2022
    November 2021
    April 2021
    September 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Picture