Category: Environment

Attraction, repulsion wrapped up in one sculpture project

6/5/2019

At first I thought all this must still be debris from the Japan tsunami. But that was eight years ago and the surf in my remote neck of the woods keeps throwing up snarls of monofilament netting, plastic shards, nylon rope, bits of fibreglass hulls, and styrofoam. So much styrofoam.

I’ve been collecting up the stuff, inspired by this Gulf island’s own Styrophobe who’s taken on what some would say is a Sisyphean task of removing even the tiny beads of polystyrene from the clefts of rock along the shoreline.

My gathering is a tiny, maybe even futile, gesture but I’m giving form to the invisible: the bits and pieces we overlook on the foreshore or in the forest that, when lashed, bound, and woven together demand attention. These small but critical masses of debris are inspired by the found-material sculptures of Judith Scott. As I lash, bind, and weave I think of how the kids in my life would like to be in on this: hunting for material, making form from their hands and imaginations.

Inspired by the sculptures by Judith Scott, this mass is texturally rich with culturally-embedded petroleum-derived materials.

My gathering requires connecting with others to access materials. The Styrophobe, who’s also the guy in charge of the local dump, stands on the top of the garbage mountain, holding up uncertain objects for my consideration: How’s this? This stuff looks pretty good. Could you use this?

In 15 minutes I fill the back of the pickup truck with a curated collection of colourful plastic throwaways: pool noodles, watering cans, yards of orange fencing, jerrycans, twine, tape, cleaning-pad refill boxes, five-gallon buckets and lids. I fill up with purple things, red things, plastics in acid green, electric blue, hazard yellow, and caution orange — all the colours of the petrochemical rainbow.

A fan of the local Styrophobe is overwhelmed by the throwaway plastic in this garbage mountain in the forest.

A curated collection of non-biodegrable recycling rejects fills a pickup truck.

After a lot of material prep (cutting off snags and sharp bits, wiping and washing off surface debris), I haul it to the local school where the kids, teacher and I dive in and play with the unwanted stuff. We have plans and we don’t have a plan, which is the right place to be with material exploration. This is where we learn to work with each material and not against its inherent nature, a great reminder of the futility of forcing solutions. This is where we learn to follow our hands, to work on our own or collectively over days and not minutes, to consider colour, form, and techniques for putting it all together, to create something that resonates with this time and place out of nothing anybody wanted.

It’s an important start for the generation that will be forced to deal with this legacy of stuff long after the plastic-agers die off.

Kids take to the colourful cast-offs during Day One of a sculpture workshop.

Nature shows us that after devastation comes renewal

4/26/2017

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Foxglove, the flowering tower that rises out of the ashes of forest fires, bursts up from bare earth. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

The 91-year-old CEO of the Commonwealth did not deem 2016 another annus horribilis but it was one for the political history books.

It seems only fitting that these dark days broken up by unfathomable acts of insanity have unfolded in this part of the watery world against the backdrop of a record-breaking dark, bitter-cold West Coast winter and freak snowstorms followed by the soggiest spring in memory.

We need to get out from under the sky booming with construction cranes, beyond the billboards promising freedom through technological mobility, away from the toys that hold what American social critic Chris Hedges calls the mind-numbing pop-culture “spectacle” that distracts us from understanding the pretty heavy political reality in his country and the world at large.

What we need now is to get outside and breathe in all the evidence that shows that from destruction and turmoil inevitably sprouts new life, new understandings and revelations. It’s there in the cracks of the sidewalk or the muddy tracks of machinery, and in our own devastated hearts: renewal.

The natural world gives us hope. After a long winter of discomfort and disbelief we are no longer asleep at the wheel, no longer assuming, reacting or over-reacting. We are thawing out and waking up.

We are becoming.

A dead tree limb is grounds for a pale green patch of lichen. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

A baby huckleberry erupts from a massive stump, remnant from an old clear-cut. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

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

12/10/2016

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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.

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.

Art students take to the (permanent) car-free streets. (Carlyn Yandle and photo)

Narrow spaces invite humane activity. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

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.

A religious procession is part of the passing cultural parade. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Vehicle thoroughfares and parking areas are mostly on the fringes and below the city. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

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Hope springs forth from lush, haunting images

6/12/2015

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I really want to believe our Prime Minister’s — what, pledge? Hope? Prediction? — that we will be a fossil-fuel-free nation by the year 2100, as he told the rest of the Gang of 7 at their Bavarian get-together last week.

But any hope I have for a truly green-fueled nation is drying up like a California swimming hole. My bet is not on political will but epic disaster as the catalyst for truly altering our course — a perfect storm of events that will push us thisclose to the collapse of the very (and varied) ecosystems that spawned our species.

But I still find faith in the forces of nature, which may be why I am attracted to any images of the natural takeover of our failed or abandoned constructions.

The sparkle of that emerald gem of hope lies in this now-famous image of the executive offices of the Henry Ford executive offices at the Model T headquarters in Detroit.

I first saw this image by American artist Andrew Moore in a New York Times Magazine photo essay following the economic collapse of Detroit’s all-consuming auto industry. Where once business titans swaggered now was a thick carpet of moss.

The entire industrial complex may have caved in but as long as the moss still grows, well, I guess we have a chance. (Detroit is now shrinking, with derelict houses returning to forest.)

I was reminded of that image again this week when big-league newspapers such as the Independent and the UK Mirror picked up on the social-trending images of an abandoned fishing village being reclaimed by nature, by Shanghai photographer Jane Qing.

I could find nothing in those Google pages of links that would explain what happened to the inhabitants of this island community, part of a large archipelago at the mouth of the Yangtze river. The particular circumstances are shrouded in vines, absorbed back into the lush island hillside, but local economic collapse is likely the culprit.

It is the moss, the vines in these images that reveal human folly and frailty.

They are the green shoots of hope that cool the creeping drought — and doubt.

Abandoned car in Dordogne, France

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Public art tour by bike all part of the velorution

4/17/2015

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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.

The 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.

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.)

Vancouver 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:

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Compelling art all part of the protest

11/28/2014

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The war in the woods is heating up again. Except it's not the people against forestry giants MacMillan-Bloedel or Fletcher Challenge; on this day it's Kinder Morgan.

Yagis Eating an Oil Tanker by Ian Reid Nusi. (Photo by Christopher Glawe)

Oil-pipeline officials are doing their best to try to shape protestors at Burnaby Mountain these past weeks as a small group of environmentalist wackos. Meanwhile, the movement is growing. And so is the art.

Marshall McLuhan said, "Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it." And that's what I think about when I see this work by Ian Reid Nusi. Yup, that would be an oil tanker in that sea monster's mouth, carved in response to the prospect of the Northern Gateway oil pipeline moving tar sands diluted bitumen to the coast and onto tankers. (Artist interview clip below)

Environmental protests have shaped this province, and some important artworks have been a part of that.

Wallace's CP IV, 1993-95, 178 x 300 cm (from Canadian Art magazine)

It's in Ian Wallace's large-scale photo collage murals (reconfirmed as important works five years later in Canadian Art magazine).

His plywood patterns interrupt the protest images from the summer of 1993, the height of the fight to save Clayoquot Sound, the largest unlogged temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island. About 800 protestors were arrested and carted away, while Wallace created a whole new way of seeing art, protest and the role and position of the visual artist.

Wallace's artworks endure, and also serve as a reminder to those who view them in galleries that what multinational corporation spin-doctors would like to refer to as a green-y lunatic fringe is actually a large and diverse population of British Columbians who are willing to inconvenience themselves for the sake of protecting the oceans or the last of the great rainforests.

Headwaters of the Stein, B.C., August 1988 (from tonionley.com)

Toni Onley has been in there too. As part of the large protest to protect the Stein Valley from logging, he organized a plan to fly in well-established artists to the vital watershed area to paint their impressions, with sales going to help the campaign to save it from a plan for the Mitsubishi company to log the old growth for disposable chopsticks.

Onley, who died in 2004, recalled painting a watercolour in support of a Stein cultural centre while “Chief Perry Redon, the chairman of the Lilloet Tribal Council... beat his drum and sang to the four quarters. I was inspired and soon we had a watercolour for the Stein poster….”

Ken Wu photo by T.J. Watt (tjwatt.com)

Many paintings of the beauty of the protested areas of the Stein, the Carmanah Valley, Clayoquot Sound helped fund the continuing protest, and today form important collections and are captured in coffee table books like Carmanah: Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rainforest.

But there's nothing like a compelling photograph to bring the stark reality of the protest home.

T.J. Watt's photo of Ken Wu, the Ancient Forest Alliance’s executive director, sits atop a massive red cedar stump in the Upper Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island. The photo earns its place as an important visual of the struggle to retain a small portion of the natural environment, but its place is also determined by this image that is forceful in its subject of scale and a unique moment in time.

Shawn Hunt's Untitled, 2013

The Kinder Morgan survey crew has to be out of Burnaby Mountain in a few days, but the protests against the transport of a dirty, risky diluted bitumen in lieu of real government investment in clean energy sources has just begun.

It's there on the faces of the growing protestors, and in the art that's growing along with it. And sometimes, as in this surrealist portrait by Shawn Hunt, it's in the faces in the art.

This is the history of environmental struggle in this corner of the world, and part of the history of art, too.

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Attraction, repulsion wrapped up in one sculpture project

Nature shows us that after devastation comes renewal

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

Hope springs forth from lush, haunting images

Public art tour by bike all part of the velorution

Compelling art all part of the protest

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