writings - carlyn yandle

Art student's off-grid heater would make quite the gift

12/19/2014

Dear Santa,

I know I haven't written since I was a kid, and when it comes to wants, I'm pretty much good. Unlike a lot of my neighbours who rent homes that are slated for demolition in the coming year or who have to hit the food bank at the end of every month when the money runs out, I'm safe and secure — for now.

You see, I'm a bit of a prepper. I worry about the security of all our food and the hikes in cost of living in the era of climate change so I've been doing workarounds for a lot of that. I have a kitchen garden and my main way of getting around is by bike. My work- and social life surrounds making, mostly with materials that have already served their primary purpose. If the power grid or the banks fail, I can at least charge up my bike lights and headlamps with my Biolite camp stove, using bits of cardboard and twigs so I can get out there and be of some use. My one weak spot, though, is heat. Condos with wood-burning fireplaces being a rarity in these parts, I would have no choice but to go outdoors and hang by the bonfires in the streets.

But now I see there is the Egloo, a table-top terracotta dome-thing that can throw off 70C degrees of radiant heat using just a few votive candles. Pant! Pant!

It's the brainchild of Marco Zagaria, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Trouble is, it's not quite available yet. Zagaria has been hand-making the prototypes on a potter's wheel (promo video below) and is currently crowd-sourcing funding — already surpassing his goal by 15 per cent at the time of this writing — to have them mass-produced. So here's where you come in, Santa. I don't know if I can wait, what with us all teetering on this edge of the Ring of Fire and seismologists referring to the imminent major earthquake as The Big One. I figure if you can squeeze your girth into a gas fireplace exhaust vent you can put an Egloo under my tree pronto.

However, as is my nature, I am prepped for the disaster of that not happening as well, so I've sourced some of Zagaria's own research and have latched onto a snippet of his virtual collaboration that he tagged as one of his YouTube 'favorites', a simple arrangement of one clay plot bolted inside another, resting on some thin cinderblocks. (See YouTube clip, at bottom.) It ain't pretty, but it will do the job in a pinch and uses stuff in my immediate vicinity.

Just goes to show, it takes a creative like that Italian art student to arrive at that balance between form and function that marks brilliant industrial design, which begets attraction which begets demand which begets profit motive which begets financial backing which begets wide-scale production which begets marketing to preppers like me.

What am I saying? — you're Santa. Surely you know all about the value of artists in economics and sustainability innovations.

Wishfully,
Carlyn

QR button blanket: Epic fail or a larger reading?

3/21/2014

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.

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.

Wavy 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.

Granville Island needs an injection of innovation

3/7/2014

Photo 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.

Intriguing 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.

Toronto'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.)

Bees and bubble tea straws inspire new work

2/28/2014

My mind has been buzzing with thoughts of legendary environmentalist-artist Joseph Beuys as I've been hatching an idea for a public artwork that is not so much intrusive as inclusive, especially if you're a native mason bee.

It is the convergence of my love of patterns of circles within circles and my growing understanding of the immense value of the Blue Orchard (aka Osmia) Mason Bee. This non-stinging little guy gets up early in the season, collects nectar and spreads pollen at the same time, and is a workhouse in the pollination business compared to the introduced honey bee.

Like most of us, Blue Mason Bees live on their own but are gregarious except their preferred condo complexes are holes in wood. It turns out they also live quite nicely in paper straws that are closed at the back end.

Artists/gardeners/environmentalists/industrial designers have been innovating ways to boost the population of mason bees in response to colony collapse of the honey bee.

Condo complexes set up in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris (above) and in the Paris Botanical Garden provide real inspiration, as do the smaller mobile homes, like the one below in Copenhagen.

Carlyn Yandle photo

I've been experimenting with making the straws (see video at bottom) with an emphasis on design, found materials (paper bags and coffee cans). Now for a little colour.

My theory is that bubble tea straws could provide just the right waterproof structure for accommodating all those straws the females pack with cocoons. The straws would be easily removed and the cocoons harvested, cleaned and stored in the fridge for the winter, ready to be set out next spring.

I have no idea whether this will work, but the creative process is one of problem-finding and problem-solving.

Carlyn Yandle photo

The plan uses the colourful clusters of the translucent angled straws because they provide built-in overhangs for each condo while allowing for the necessary south light to hit each doorway.

The clusters-within-cluster design of fiber-optic cables (see below) sets the pattern course in a design that moves from pinky-finger width to something on a grand scale that can be seen from a block away by humans.

It's one of those situations where it will take some doing to get to some knowing.

Cross-section of a fiber-optic cable

procraftination spikes when math hits

1/24/2014

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:

'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.

Innovation can be a risky business

1/16/2014

Coming up with new ideas is not without its hazards. The world-renowned Noma restaurant is a case in point. Chef-patron Rene Redzepi uses what grows in the area, innovating astounding food creations famously foraged from the local land and sea. Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn't. He's even admitted to his own spontaneous bowel reactions to his experiments.

Mountains of Christmas lights headed for the grinder in Shijiao, China (Atlantic Magazine)

One outfit in the southern Chinese town of Shijiao has innovated a low-tech method for squeezing a livelihood out of the great bulk of broken Christmas lights. Making use of the empty shipping containers returning to the global export hub and North Americans' addiction to buying cheap throwaways, the strings are thrown into a grinder, then shovelled into a water bath that separates the heavier metal wire fragments from the plastic insulator bits. The metals are eventually separated into reusable copper and other metals, and the plastic is used in slipper soles. (Check out the fascinating video.)

Granted, there are problems, like the possibility of lead in the plastic that ends up cozying up to the soles of feet and the spewing pollution from copper processing.

That necessity to make a living is one mother of invention, a prime example of the hard birth of a global leader in innovation.

Baled copper. Carlyn Yandle photo

Considering the glut of stuff and our continued rampant consumerism, it's becoming unconscionable to me to use materials that are not either post-market or readily re-usable. That's easy to face down in the making of sculptural objects. I find inspiration through foraging in my own environment, where culturally-weighty artifacts from spider-webby doilies to crushed copper play with concept.

But I'm stymied when it comes to painting. I love the exploration but can't stand the materials. I rely on petroleum-based paints and resins, first-use softwood stretchers, brushes and canvasses. Acrylic paints allow me to do the layering I can't achieve in oils, creating that fine line between the handmade and digital.

Untitled, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 30" on panel.

I feel it all coming to a head: Am I willing to lay down the paintbrush to reduce my own carbon footprint? Not quite.

But I am taking a few baby steps. I've been experimenting with composing larger paintings out of my painting studies, to incorporate the patterns of both the painted surface and the piecing, not unlike a quilt made up of well-chosen materials that have outlived their original purpose.

It may just be that necessity to reduce my consumption that pushes me into innovating in painting. Like other innovations, there will be failures and disasters. Somewhere in there is a new way to approach painting.

Designs for the rich look like cheap tricks following calamity

11/15/2013

Nothing against the design visionary of Zaha Hadid but all this global starchitecture looks like rich people's toys in the wake of disasters like Typhoon Haiyan.

This is no time for designers to try to outshine one another with glittery sculptural-building displays of unimaginable wealth, at any monetary and environmental cost. The real innovators are looking at the pure essence of architecture: creating structures that enhance our lives with a low-carbon footprint.

It's seen in the transitional cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, providing a spiritual focal point following the February 2011quake that destroyed the city's most revered piece of architecture. And it's just one example of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban's commitment to the craft. (Watch Ban's Ted Talk, at bottom.)

In these times of wild, climate-change-induced (un)natural disasters, the truly important cutting-edge architecture does not appear as large-scale steel-polymer edifices with conceptual references to nature, the likes of which is taking shape in the form of Hadid's $27 billion performing arts centre in Abu Dhabi.

These times call for humane systems that are actually connected to the natural ecosystem, such as Ban's network of emergency shelters set up in a school gym after the devastating tsunami in eastern Japan in 2011.

More than natural in concept, the materials are tubes made of recycled, locally available material that are easily cycled back into the ecosystem.

They are light enough for anyone to use to construct without the aid of heavy machinery and simple enough to be re-used according to need, from temporary beds to longer-term shelters for displaced people, to these cardboard cottages in India.

It's architecture that can react fast to calamity, restore self-respect, contribute to a humanitarian effort through design.

That's one mother of another need met

6/7/2013

In case you want to know, this is a picture of what is called beaching gear — at least in Prince Rupert, B.C.

It's the kind of passing sight that makes a city girl demand that the car we're in be stopped and reversed. Now. Because even though I had no idea what I was looking at, I knew that this was another fine example of one of my favourite truisms, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Photos must be snapped so someone who knows about these things could explain.

I found just the guy, a cousin-in-law. He knew the owner of this curious object well. (It's a small town.) "Oh, that's in Seal Cove," he said. His buddy needed to be able to tow his... (I want to say seaplane here, but that might not be right)... out of the harbour, and this Caddy, with its front-wheel drive, was just the jalopy for the job. But how does it stay up, with only two wheels?, I asked (and then again, not quite getting it). It was finally established that some metal bits forged to the front end provide enough counter-weight for the thing to balance on two wheels. An engineering feat!

But what I really liked about this innovation was the extra effort the inventor made to make the beaching gear more, uh, seemly, I guess: the retrofitted tail lights; the back-end paint job that tied it all together. For some reason it reminded me of the stump of a leg; you know some vital working parts are missing but it's heeled over nicely.

Objects like these straddle that satisfying space between utility and art. Here in Seal Cove, it was pretty much overlooked, but plunk it down at MOMA and now we're in a conversation with more legs than this beaching gear's wheels: artist intention, context, use value versus art value, etc.

There is a certain soulfulness in these intriguing/peculiar objects that squeeze into existence between the tight parameters of lack of money or access and a pressing need. This school bus re-purposed as an underground... (tornado shelter? food cellar?) also packs a visual punch.

I'm intrigued by the happy accidents that can turn a necessary invention into an art object or an artwork into a functional object after the fact. On a grand scale it leads to some of the most enduring, visually interesting cities, like the narrow labyrinth of streets of Tokyo that trace terraced rice fields or the watery thoroughfares of Venice. This slow, organic development of an urban landscape is at odds with the speculative profit-driven mega developments currently rapidly changing my city's landscape.

But our need to negotiate these monolithic structures will result, over time, in inventions that contribute to an increasingly vibrant culture. We get glimpses of that with every passing pedaller working for Shift: Urban Cargo Delivery here in Vancouver, or as far as Bangkok's streets teeming with ever-advancing Tuk-tuks.

Innovating out of necessity creates human connections, from one guy's beaching gear in a sleepy cove outside Prince Rupert, B.C. to corporate shifts on the streets of Paris. (Take a video ride-along below:)

Image from vancouverfoundationawards.ca

Image found posted on www.modderpoel.nl

Oh the laces you'll go when you're distracted

4/5/2013

We are to understand that being distracted is bad, and being focused is good. Being focused will get the job done while being in the moment is not productive — productivity being the cornerstone of our prevailing Protestant work ethic.

I'm aware that it is absurd to continue measuring our national wellness by Gross Domestic Product stats and I deeply respect those ER and childcare workers who must rely on their mental agility to withstand chaotic conditions but if I'm not at least working toward producing something I start wondering why I'm even here.

I've been forced to think about the virtues of making over the last several weeks as life trumped my fastidious little production schedule. The best I could do was grab a few moments to watch from the sidelines, or catch a glimpse of work by other producers, like Eastern-Canadian metal sculptor Cal Lane whose Gutter Snipes show at Grunt Gallery wound up last week. Lane, known for wielding an oxy-acetylene torch and scrambling around 2,000-gallon oil tanks, is my kinda hands-on gal.

Photo from grunt.ca

She shows serious devotion to her work of imposing filigree patterns into found, often rusted industrial materials. It's the kind of demanding work ethic that recharges my productivity urge, but under the circumstances I had to park that and be content surfing over reviews of her work, her other shows and other collaborators, and soon, other expressions of lace as a pattern.

I'm sure that much has been written about the importance of going on a mental/physical/emotional hiatus, but I usually file that reading for later and get back to the job at hand. That's probably a sign that I may be overdosing on a devotional practice.

Since I couldn't get down to any real work I did a lot of image-surfing between things. This image of the artist's Burnt Lawn installation (right) reminds me that my serious focus can narrow the visual field.

Focusing on not focusing so much is a bit of a trial for me but I'm trying to resist the production compulsion and ride the Googleverse free-form a little more, enjoying the discussion on a related show, Lace in Translation, at Philadelphia University or viewing an interview with Lane at Grunt Gallery (at right).

Lane's 'Burnt Lawn' at The Design Center at Philadelphia University, 2010

And then I did what was only possible due to the distractedness of the last few weeks: I sat back and did nothing but watch a 12-minute video made for a 2009 exhibition of re-imagined manufactured lace that plays in the space between art and production. Time well wasted.

Kerry Polite photo, from The Design Center

Lace Fence, galvanized PVC-coated wire, by Demakersvan, 2009. 16 panels: 152'W x 6.5'H

Art that has tongues wagging is working

3/15/2013

A few weeks back, one of the local dailies ran a staff photo of a grumpy-looking woman wearing a hand-drawn sign around her neck that read: “Mount Pleasant needs a pool not a poodle on a pole.”

God, I miss the newsroom sometimes. When that kind of photo lands on your desk (so to speak) you do a little happy dance. This is the money shot, the hook into a hot little story, the art that guarantees the front page of a community paper. And the alliteration in the scrawled sentiment doesn’t hurt either.

It's the kind of story that has the community buzzing, the phones ringing, the (e-)letters pouring in. It has, as they say, legs. It promises follow-up stories with new angles, fresh emotions. It fends off the greatest fear for an understaffed newsroom: crickets. (Watch how a CTV news story adds fuel to the fire.)

Successful public art does the same thing. Love it or hate it, it gets people talking, debating, engaging. As I write this the tweets for #MainStPoodle have neared 1,000 since the pooch made the papers. (My December post on the freshly erected poodle is here.)

It's all grist for the mill for those on the media sidelines but now that I'm out from behind the desk and in the rejection-rich realm of art-making, I wonder how the poodle-producer, Montreal artist Gisele Amantea, feels about people griping over the seven-foot-tall porcelain pooch’s $97K price tag. How does any public-art-maker, for that matter, not feel at least a little wounded by the slings and arrows launched against their own creative expression? An opinion piece in a newspaper is tomorrow's fish-wrap (it sounds archaic even as I write it) but public art endures. It could torment the critics for decades; the criticism could torment the artist for life.

New York City artist Dennis Oppenheim’s 1997 public artwork, Device to Root Out Evil installed in Coal Harbour was never intended to be permanent but plenty of Vancouverites squawked that the piece known as the 'upside-down church' was “sacrilegious” or worse: view-hampering. But does an artist of that international stature have all the steely resilience to chalk up the chatter to 'community engagement'?

(Above: photo by Papalars)

I wonder because I felt that pang of rejection as I was photo-documenting the installation of Crossover, the scramble-style four-way crosswalk in Steveston in 2011. My design was an attempt to weave together the history of the Japanese net-makers and the modern-day marine flavour of this corner of the Lower Mainland using a simple, enduring motif. I was not prepared for the few individuals who showed up while I was snapping photos, griping at anyone within earshot that this was a colosal waste of taxpayers' dollars, not to mention a safety hazard. (I'm not so resilient that I could resist following up on the hazard part and I'm relieved to learn it's a safety improvement.)

The other day an artist friend who had to return to the salaried workplace said she never realized how much rejection she had to deal with as a full-time working artist. I'm starting to see that this business ain't for sissies.