Carlyn Yandle photo This is clearly not a staged photo. Pretty much every rule of home decor is ignored here in this old East Van house. And that's why I love it.
Maybe it's the weather but I've just about had enough of the grey-washed matte-bland interiors that we are supposed to love to live in. Where is the love in all those glassy surfaces and matchy-matchy square furniture?
Various people and their various pets and their various collections have lived in this place for a century. The walls (and doors and kitchen cupboards and floors) do talk. They speak of the current long-time owner's love of old things, and his appreciation of the presumably impulsive work of his artist friend who painted the large Winnipeg Jets logo right smack dab in the middle of the original fir wood floor in the kitchen.
It's a home with an open-door policy. Drop by anytime. If it's late Sunday afternoon, you might be absorbed into dinner arrangements, which are kept loose; you never know who's going to show up. There are a lot of stories.
Maybe it's the weather but I've just about had enough of the grey-washed matte-bland interiors that we are supposed to love to live in. Where is the love in all those glassy surfaces and matchy-matchy square furniture?
Various people and their various pets and their various collections have lived in this place for a century. The walls (and doors and kitchen cupboards and floors) do talk. They speak of the current long-time owner's love of old things, and his appreciation of the presumably impulsive work of his artist friend who painted the large Winnipeg Jets logo right smack dab in the middle of the original fir wood floor in the kitchen.
It's a home with an open-door policy. Drop by anytime. If it's late Sunday afternoon, you might be absorbed into dinner arrangements, which are kept loose; you never know who's going to show up. There are a lot of stories.
Carlyn Yandle photo This door off the kitchen says something about the painter who did it (not to anyone's plans or specifications) and the owner-friend who digs it (and the painter).
To anyone else it can be enjoyed as an example of painting itself. It can take the viewer to Frank Stella and the school of minimalism that relied on the physical limits of spaces to define the abstracted field; in this case, the inset panelling on the original door to the basement. Its dynamically asymmetrical pattern also speaks to quilting and other fiber arts.
It's all part of a time-based dwelling-sculpture that is growing in layers over the decades, a living gallery of collaborative mark-making by those who have contributed to the social activity therein.
The only thing that's inappropriate at this old house is the kind of fetishistic order as seen in virtual tours of display suites in a city seized by its speculative real-estate boom. Those investment-unit surfaces have nothing to say besides 'new' and 'generic.'
This place gives new meaning to 'open house.'
To anyone else it can be enjoyed as an example of painting itself. It can take the viewer to Frank Stella and the school of minimalism that relied on the physical limits of spaces to define the abstracted field; in this case, the inset panelling on the original door to the basement. Its dynamically asymmetrical pattern also speaks to quilting and other fiber arts.
It's all part of a time-based dwelling-sculpture that is growing in layers over the decades, a living gallery of collaborative mark-making by those who have contributed to the social activity therein.
The only thing that's inappropriate at this old house is the kind of fetishistic order as seen in virtual tours of display suites in a city seized by its speculative real-estate boom. Those investment-unit surfaces have nothing to say besides 'new' and 'generic.'
This place gives new meaning to 'open house.'
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